Afghan police hunting insurgent kill parliament member instead

The lawmaker and his son are killed in an ambush that had been set to find insurgents transporting a wounded commander in Afghanistan's north. The incident raises more questions about security forces

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - Police hunting for a wounded insurgent commander mistakenly ambushed a vehicle carrying a member of the Afghan parliament, killing him and his son, provincial officials said today.

President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation into the incident, which took place overnight in Baghlan province, in Afghanistan's north.

Taliban fighters and other insurgents have made significant inroads over the last year in the province. A new NATO supply route runs through the area, making it a magnet for militant strikes.

The lawmaker, Mohammad Yunos Shirnagha, was returning home after a late-night meeting with constituents when the shootout with police erupted, said Gen. Kabir Andarabi, the provincial police chief.

Police in the provincial capital, Pul-e-Kumri, had been expecting insurgents to try to transport a commander who was believed to have been injured in a clash hours earlier, on Tuesday. That battle left four police officers and at least four militants dead, and several insurgents wounded.

Accounts from Shirnagha's associates and provincial authorities differed as to circumstances surrounding the shootout, which took place at about 2:30 a.m.

The police said the lawmaker's car ran a roadblock set up by the authorities and that his vehicle was hit after the firing of warning shots into the air. But some fellow members of the upper house of parliament, and two surviving bodyguards, expressed doubts that police had properly identified themselves before opening fire.

The incident raises new questions about the training and abilities of the Afghan security forces, which are a linchpin of the Obama administration's plans for an eventual drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Western officials hope that Afghan police and soldiers will in the next several years be able to assume responsibility for safeguarding the country; in the meantime an additional 30,000 U.S. troops and 7,000 from NATO allies are to be deployed in the coming year.

Underscoring the importance placed on the role of the Afghan security forces, Karzai paid a visit today to a police academy, and also visited Afghan police and soldiers injured in the line of duty.

He was accompanied by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has said he would like to see the Afghan security forces grow from their current strength of about 250,000 to 400,000.

Also today, a roadside bomb apparently aimed at coalition forces killed three civilians and injured five others in Helmand province, in Afghanistan's south. Roadside bombs now account for about four-fifths of the casualties suffered by Western forces, and kill hundreds of Afghan civilians every year as well.

Military authorities today also disclosed the death of a British soldier a day earlier from a roadside bomb, also in Helmand.

In Paktia province, bordering Pakistan, coalition forces killed a Taliban commander who was blamed for the planting of a number of roadside bombs, military officials said.

Source:latimes.com/

Iran helping the Taliban, US ambassador claims

Iran has been providing weapons and other help to the Taliban, the US ambassador to Afghanistan has claimed.

Karl Eikenberry, a former commanding general in Afghanistan, said parts of the regime had transcended sectarian divisions within Islam to provide support for fundamentalist groups fighting Western forces in Afghanistan.

"Iran or elements within Iran have provided training assistance and some weapons to the Taliban," said Mr Eikenberry.

"General Petraeus has reviewed these reports and said that the scope of Iranian support is nothing on the level that was given previously by Iran to various terrorist elements in Iraq.

"Still, the reports about this kind of low-level support and periodic co-operation between elements in Iran and militant extremist Taliban are disturbing and do not show good faith by Afghanistan's neighbour to the West."

Iran's Shia Muslim regime's has long been suspicious of the extremist Sunni Taliban and Tehran co-operated with the US-led effort to overthrow the movement in 2001.

But a Western official involved in Iran policy-making said yesterday that Iranian officials were now playing both sides of the Afghan conflict to ensure that the Western-backed Kabul government remained weak.

"Afghanistan should be an area of common interest between Britain and Iran because they don't want an extremist Sunni government on their border," an official said.

"But Afghanistan, like Iraq, is in its backyard and Tehran just does not want a Western victory or a strong pro-Western government on its eastern flank. It is now playing two roles there, assisting the insurgency even as it provides aid."

Source:telegraph.co.uk