Afghan Police

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held - and others squatted beside - the corpse's severed legs.

WASHINGTON - In a pointed response to images of Marines urinating on corpses and soldiers posing with body parts, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta appealed to American troops to refrain from misconduct that has complicated the war effort in Afghanistan. Panetta, speaking Friday to an Army brigade at Ft. Benning, Ga., was blunt in his assessment of the breakdown of discipline within the ranks, saying these incidents "show a lack of judgment, a lack of professionalism and a lack of leadership.

It's only his second day on the job after graduating from a police academy sponsored by U.S. Marines, and Khair Muhammad is stopping cars along the main road to the Nawa market to check for explosives. An ancient Toyota rolls up, jammed with four men, five boys, a woman fully covered in a burka and, against the back window, a small goat. In a friendly but firm voice, the 20-year-old police officer orders the men and boys out of the vehicle for a pat-down search. Then he checks the glove box and underneath the floor mats -- as well as under the goat.

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held - and others squatted beside - the corpse's severed legs.

In three separate attacks Thursday, suicide bombers targeted Afghan police and government officials, killing three Afghan police and injuring a half dozen bystanders. Several would-be suicide bombers teamed up to attack an Afghan police training center Thursday morning in Aryub Jaji, a border town in eastern Paktia province, according to spokesmen for NATO forces and the Paktia governor's office. After the attackers exchanged fire with Afghan forces at the center, some fled, one was shot before he could enter the training compound and another detonated a bomb at the center's front gate, according to Rohullah Samoon, a spokesman for the Paktia governor.

In what has become a near-daily drumbeat of insurgent attacks on Afghan government and security installations, a team of gunmen and suicide bombers on Sunday stormed a police outpost in an eastern city, killing six people, most of them Afghan police and soldiers. The four assailants died as well, officials said. The early-morning onslaught in the city of Khowst typified a pattern of insurgent strikes that has taken hold as the spring "fighting season" gathers force — a coordinated assault on a site that somehow symbolizes the authority of the central government.

National 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 Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation of the incident, which took place overnight in Baghlan province in Afghanistan's north. Taliban fighters and other insurgents have made significant inroads in the province over the last year. A new NATO supply route runs through the area, making it a magnet for militant strikes.

The bodies of five more of the Afghan police officers captured last week by the Taliban in a rural district have been recovered, and Afghan officials said Sunday that the men were brutally slain. The grisly discovery brought to nine the number of confirmed deaths among a group of 16 officers who disappeared when the Taliban overran the Khogyani district of Ghazni province in the early hours of Nov. 1. A Taliban spokesman asserted at the time that the men had willingly joined the insurgency ?

Authorities in a troubled province south of the Afghan capital said Thursday that four police officers were killed, apparently while trying to escape Taliban custody, and that they may have been among a group of police who disappeared when their district was overrun by insurgents this week. A surviving police officer was being questioned, the officials said. The Taliban had claimed Monday that a group of about 16 police officers in the Khogyani district of Ghazni province had defected to the insurgency, and had actively participated in torching government buildings and vehicles before voluntarily leaving with the militants.

U.S. soldiers and Afghan police early Saturday swarmed a dense Taliban stronghold of mud-brick homes on the western shoulder of Kandahar, conducting searches and promising aid in a preview of a planned summer campaign to control the insurgent movement's spiritual home. Operation Kokaran was named for the neighborhood where the Taliban have assassinated government officials and built infiltration routes. The U.S. goal is to clear out insurgents, build up local governance and bring in reconstruction projects.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan police and army have won praise for fighting off one of the war's most ambitious insurgent strikes, but the marathon siege of key diplomatic, government and military installations in Kabul also highlighted worrisome weaknesses, including glaring intelligence failures. With evidence pointing to a virulent Taliban offshoot known as the Haqqani network as the perpetrators of the tightly coordinated assaults, the prospect of protecting Kabul appears even more difficult.

  Britain, the United States' staunchest ally in Afghanistan, has suffered its worst single battlefield loss in six years, testing a strained coalition's commitment to ensure that Afghan security forces can take over the task of fighting the Taliban. Six British troops were presumed dead after a massive blast destroyed their heavily armored vehicle in Helmand province, Western military officials said Wednesday. The fatalities mark a grim milestone, pushing British deaths in the course of the 10-year war above 400, a toll second only to American losses of more than 1,900 troops.

Six months ago, in a moving ceremony during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, President Hamid Karzai went on Afghan television to pardon about two dozen young boys, the youngest only 8 years old, who had been caught trying to carry out suicide attacks. On Monday, authorities in Kandahar province reported that two of the children, 10-year-olds, had been rearrested last week, apparently intending again to carry out bombings. Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

The most important holiday of the Muslim calendar got off to a violent start in Afghanistan on Sunday when suspected insurgents staged a bombing outside a mosque in the north, killing at least seven worshipers and injuring more than a dozen other people, Afghan officials said. The attack in Baghlan province, which came on the first day of the three-day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, was condemned by Afghan officials as un-Islamic. Gen. John Allen, the U.S. Marine who commands all Western forces in the country, called the bombing "despicable.

American and Afghan officials on Wednesday blamed a Taliban offshoot, the Haqqani network, for a marathon assault on the U.S. Embassy and the NATO force headquarters that killed 16 Afghans, including civilians and members of the security forces. Eleven assailants died as well, the last of them shot Wednesday morning as Afghan police, backed by NATO helicopters, regained control of the unfinished high-rise structure the attackers used as their main staging ground. The 20-hour siege paralyzed the city center, terrorized Kabul residents and sent hundreds of American embassy worker, military personnel and civilian NATO staff into hardened bunkers, where they remained for hours.

Afghan authorities on Wednesday morning said the last of six attackers who laid siege to the U.S. Embassy and other buildings from a high-rise structure had been killed and the area was secure. The midmorning announcement by the Interior Ministry came nearly 21 hours after the start of the attack, raising troubling questions about why it took so long to secure the building under construction that the assailants used as a staging ground. From its upper floors, they rained rockets and gunfire on a heavily fortified enclave containing embassies, government buildings and the headquarters of the NATO force.

Afghan national police checkpoint No. 4, substation 3, is a blighted shell of a building ringed by garbage and shaded by scruffy trees whose leaves are coated with fine gray dust. Here, nine police officers have the task of protecting the Shinghazi Baba neighborhood of southern Kandahar. Sometimes they can't even protect themselves. Two months ago, an officer was fatally shot by an insurgent who escaped on a motorcycle. "The force-protection posture is not really all that great," Sgt. 1st Class Arnaldo Colon, a U.S. Army military policeman, said as he arrived Wednesday morning for an inspection.

Militants used suicide bombers, automatic rifles and rocket grenades to launch an hours-long commando-style raid on a British compound in Kabul on Friday that killed at least eight people. The brazen attack underscored the militants' ability to unleash large-scale assaults even in the heavily secured Afghan capital. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the compound housing the British Council, saying it was meant to coincide with the anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain 92 years ago. The British Council is an agency funded by Britain's government that fosters the development of education and civil society in other countries.

A powerful Taliban car bomb killed as many as 12 Afghan policemen and a child on Sunday in a southern town where Afghan forces took over security responsibilities from Western troops less than two weeks ago. The suicide attack on an Afghan police headquarters in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, could bode ill for hopes that the Afghan police and army will be able to protect themselves and the civilian population against insurgents without...