U.S. ambassador: Kabul attack won’t spawn sectarian violence in Afghanistan

KABUL — The U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan said Saturday that the United States has virtually no information about the motive or culprit behind a rare suicide bombing that killed scores of Shiite worshipers earlier in the week, but he asserted that it was unlikely to spawn sectarian violence.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker said he was skeptical of reports that a hard-line Pakistani militant group that has claimed it carried out Tuesday’s attack has a nascent Afghan offshoot. The prospect has worried Afghans, who fear it could change the dynamics of the Afghan war by exacerbating ethnic and sectarian tensions....Continue Reading...

Bamyan

(AfPak Channel) Amidst war, an Afghan renaissance

We often see the arts as only fit for museums, galleries, and film festivals, cloistered in halls only for the intellectual elite. But the arts can help build a nation, or in the case of Afghanistan, are rebuilding a nation, employing its people, and recalling a history forgotten in recent decades of continuous conflict. And a small group of social scientists, architects, and entrepreneurs are using culture as a vehicle to restore Afghanistan, challenging the convention that the arts are only for aesthetics....Continue Reading...

(Time Magazine) Three Days in Afghanistan: The Making of a War Reporter

War is strange. It can change your life, for good or bad or both, with the speed and ferocity of little else. In the space of a couple days in October, I ticked off two boxes I had in my head, things I needed to be checked to prove to myself that I was a bona fide war reporter. Then came a third day, just this week, that shook the certainties of the first two profoundly. ...Continue Reading....

Kabul attack: Did ISI exact revenge on Afghanistan in the aftermath of Mohmand?

A number of well coordinated attacks clearly targeting Shia Muslims in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar have killed at least 58 Shias in Afghanistan. A Pakistani anti-Shia group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has accepted the responsibility of the attacks. (Source)

A spokesman for an Pakistani extremist group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al Almi claimed responsibility in a phone call to Radio Mashaal – a Pashto language radio station. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, (LeJ) is a murderous anti-Shia group founded which acts act as surrogate for Taliban and al-Qaida. The Pakistani Taliban has its roots in anti-Shia violence, and LeJ acted as the training ground for its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud. LeJ maintained training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime but has not mounted attacks in Afghanistan in recent years. The group is believed to be supported by Pakistan’s spy agency, ISI. The group also claimed responsibility for the massacre of 29 Shia pilgrims on a bus in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province in September, and an attack on an Ashura procession in Karachi in 2009 which killed 30 people. Earlier this year, the Pakistani courts freed Malik Ishaq, one of LeJ’s founders. Ishaq had faced dozens of murder charges but the courts said there was lack of evidence – his group had allegedly killed numerous witnesses who may have testified against him. (Source)...Continue Reading......

Family mourns its own after day of prayer that turned fatal

EIGHT relatives from an extended family - three women and five children - were buried on a hillside overlooking Kabul yesterday after being killed in a suicide attack. Nine other relatives were seriously injured, including a three-year-old boy who is in a coma. At least 55 people died, including one American, and 134 people needed hospital treatment after an explosion outside a Shia shrine on Tuesday night as crowds gathered for the holy festival of Ashura...Continue Reading....

Refugee reviewer 'biased'

THE Federal Magistrates Court has ruled that a reviewer who rejected the refugee claims of a large number of Afghan boat arrivals appeared to be biased, taking an ''inflexible and mechanical'' approach to the plight of Hazara ethnic minorities fleeing persecution. Refugee approval rates for Afghan asylum seekers fell in the first three months of 2011, despite the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, as the federal government came under pressure to stem boat arrivals.....Continue Reading...