Afghan Security Forces

The U.S. military commander in Afghanistan has told top Pentagon officials that Afghan security forces must expand faster and beyond current target levels to more quickly secure the country, Defense officials said. A dramatically stepped-up training program would probably require additional U.S. forces, but it is not clear whether American commanders in Afghanistan will request more, and if so, how many. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S.

HERAT, Afghanistan -- Taliban insurgents attacked an Afghan outpost near the border with Pakistan on Friday, killing 13 soldiers, according to local officials. The fighting began around dawn and lasted four to five hours, said Wasifullah Wasifi, spokesman for the governor of Kunar province. “One more soldier is missing, so the total may turn out to be 14,” he said. The restive province is often used as an entryway for militants arriving from Pakistan's lawless northwestern area.

Insurgents took aim Sunday at Afghanistan's security forces, ambushing an army bus in the capital, Kabul, and storming an army recruitment center in the north of the country. At least eight Afghan soldiers and police were killed in the two attacks. The Afghan police and army are considered key to the West's exit strategy, which calls for the nation's forces to take over security responsibilities across the country in the next three years. That plan was endorsed at a NATO conference last month and again last week in a White House assessment of the Afghan conflict.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A man in a police uniform opened fire on U.S. and Afghan soldiers Monday at a base in eastern Afghanistan, killing two American troops in what may be the latest in a series of insider attacks by Afghans against allied security forces. Afghan news media reported that three Afghan soldiers also were killed in the shooting in Wardak, the volatile province in eastern Afghanistan where President Hamid Karzai last month ordered U.S. special forces troops to cease operations.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday sought to reassure an anxious public that security will not be compromised when the bulk of U.S. forces leave next year, saying the country needs American aid, not troops, in order to take over the fight against the Taliban. Karzai said he expected the U.S. to continue training, equipping and paying Afghan national security forces. "Afghanistan will be more secure after the foreigners leave," Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and San Diego -- Security for Afghan villagers remains precarious in the Marja district of Helmand province, where U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers mounted a massive assault in February to oust the Taliban from control, according to the Marine general who led the assault. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said late Sunday that while there are hopeful signs in Marja, with Afghan police patrolling and farmers signing up to grow crops other than opium poppy, the mission's success or failure may not be known for months.

Stepping into an intensifying debate in Washington, the new head of NATO said Monday that more allied troops are needed in Afghanistan to help train the country's security forces. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who took over Aug. 1 as NATO's secretary-general, said he agreed with an assessment last month by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, who emphasized the need to secure Afghan cities. "We have to do more now, if we want to do less later," Rasmussen said during a speech in Washington.

War's violence claimed the lives of more than 2,400 Afghan civilians in 2009, the United Nations said Wednesday, the largest annual death toll for noncombatants since the U.S.-led invasion eight years ago. But the proportion of civilian deaths attributed to Western and Afghan security forces dropped sharply in the wake of strict new rules of engagement issued in the summer by U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of Western forces...

The message could hardly have been clearer, or more brutally delivered: the beheaded corpse of a respected provincial politician, dumped by the roadside. Jawad Zehak, whose decapitated remains were recovered Tuesday, was the leader of the provincial council in Bamian, perhaps the most peaceful of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. It is one of seven areas across the country where the Afghan police and army are supposed to begin taking over security responsibility next month. Afghanistan's main intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, swiftly blamed insurgents for Zehak's abduction and killing, and declared it part of a deliberate pattern of intimidation in the areas slated for security transition.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, charged with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has closed three-quarters of its 800 bases and as it watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay. A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly "insider" attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and by strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday ordered U.S. special forces troops to leave a strategic eastern province, accusing the Americans and Afghans working for them of torturing and abducting civilians. Karzai's office charged that in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, a university student who was detained during a U.S. operation was later found with his head and fingers cut off. In another case, U.S. forces allegedly detained nine villagers who are still missing.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan security forces foiled an apparent suicide bomber in central Kabul on Sunday morning but attackers struck police and intelligence offices in two other eastern cities, killing three people, officials said. Officers with the National Directorate of Security shot and killed a suicide bomber who was driving a sport-utility vehicle packed with explosives on a road leading to one of the intelligence agency's offices in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, officials said.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, tasked with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has dismantled three-quarters of its 800 bases and watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay. A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly “insider” attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. took over Sunday as the newest and probably last U.S. commander in Afghanistan, charged with ending America's longest war even as insurgents continue to challenge the U.S.-backed Afghan government. Dunford, a four-star Marine officer, arrives as the U.S.-led NATO coalition has closed three-quarters of its 800 bases and as it watches to see whether the Afghan security forces it trained can keep the Taliban insurgency at bay. A ceremony inside the coalition's heavily guarded compound in Kabul marked the end of the 19-month tenure of Gen. John R. Allen, whose command was marred by a rash of deadly "insider" attacks by Afghan forces against their U.S. and NATO trainers and by strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

  In my Sunday column , I complained that the Senate's one-day confirmation hearing for former Sen. Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for secretary of Defense, barely touched on the war in Afghanistan, where 66,000 Americans are still risking their lives for a mission that no longer seems clear. As far as the Senate was concerned, it sounded as if the war was already over. And that's pretty much how Hagel described it as well. “We have a plan in place to transition out of Afghanistan, continue bringing our troops home and end the war," he said.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two police officers including a district commander died in a bombing Sunday near Afghanistan's border with Iran, part of a rash of attacks that killed at least 21 officers in 24 hours, Afghan officials said. The officers were patrolling in the Qala-e-Kah district of Farah province at about 8 a.m. when their vehicle struck a landmine, said Aqqa Mohammad Kemtoz, the provincial police chief. It was the latest in a series of bombings targeting the Afghan security forces, which  have been assuming increasing responsibility for safeguarding the country ahead of the departure of most foreign troops next year.

Afghan security forces seized 262 pounds of heroin in a vehicle in the Paghman district near Kabul, the official Bakhtar news agency said Monday. The agency, monitored in Islamabad, said the drug had been brought from Pakistan.

Fighting in Afghanistan left at least 24 insurgents and five Afghan security forces dead, officials said. In eastern Paktika province, along the Pakistan border, five soldiers and 18 militants were killed when insurgents attacked an Afghan army post, the U.S.-led coalition said. Clashes also continued in Helmand province, where police on Saturday killed six Taliban militants.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday sought to reassure an anxious public that security will not be compromised when the bulk of U.S. forces leave next year, saying the country needs American aid, not troops, in order to take over the fight against the Taliban. Karzai said he expected the U.S. to continue training, equipping and paying Afghan national security forces. "Afghanistan will be more secure after the foreigners leave," Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul.

WASHINGTON - Battling a potent insurgency and waning support in Washington, Afghan President Hamid Karzai will meet President Obama on Friday amid signs that the White House seeks to transform the ground war in Afghanistan into a conflict similar to the current covert war in Pakistan. The Obama administration has maintained pressure on Islamist militants who operate in Pakistan's lawless border areas through the use of targeted drone strikes against individuals and small gatherings, vast infusions of military and financial aid to the government in Islamabad, and a mostly hidden U.S. military and CIA presence.