Afghans

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. - In Afghanistan, Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, approved military cash payments to Afghan drivers of "jingle trucks," the colorful transport trucks that carry supplies to U.S. bases. Last week, Staff Sgt. Long stood in the dock in a federal courtroom here and read aloud from a statement she had written on notebook paper: "I cannot express how sorry I am … I chose to betray my country and my family. " She did not ask for mercy, she told a judge, "because I don't deserve it. " Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Meyaan Ahamad dips his head into the shed where his prized fighting dog barks ferociously at the end of a chain. The dog, a Kuchi breed, has weightlifter shoulders, a massive head, the heft of a black bear and the growl of a cougar. If Michael Vick, the American quarterback convicted of participating in an illegal dogfighting operation, were from Afghanistan, he'd probably be a national hero. In this country, canine bouts — literally "dog wars" in Dari — are keenly followed even by celebrities and government ministers.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE - President Obama has been briefed on a series of photos published in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, and finds the conduct of troops who posed with the bodies of dead Afghans "reprehensible," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. "The conduct depicted in those photographs is reprehensible and does not in any way represent the high standards of the U.S. military," Carney said Wednesday, as the president flew to Ohio for speech on job training.

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 Americans in what may be the latest insider attack by Afghans against allied security forces. Afghan officials said three Afghan police officers also were killed in the shooting in Wardak, the strategically crucial province where President Hamid Karzai last month ordered U.S. special forces to cease operations. U.S. military officials said it wasn't immediately clear whether the gunman was an Afghan police officer or impostor.

KHAZANA, Pakistan - Awal Gul knows that home is just a two-hour drive over the jagged ridgeline that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. But he hasn't been there in more than 30 years, since Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul. A refugee of a long-gone era, he doesn't have a patch of land to return to, or a house or a job. That may not matter. Pakistan is growing increasingly impatient as host of the world's largest refugee community - millions of Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and, later, Taliban rule.

KABUL, Afghanistan - American and Afghan forces rescued an American doctor who had been kidnapped by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, military authorities announced Sunday. Officials in Washington later confirmed that one of the rescuers was killed in the operation. The doctor, identified as Dilip Joseph, a U.S. citizen working for a nonprofit group based in Colorado, was rescued along with two Afghan colleagues and an Afghan driver, according to international forces and local officials.

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.

A coalition of Los Angeles clergy, lawyers and academics argued Friday that U.S. federal courts have authority over the 188 Afghan fighters held captive at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. In a legal brief filed in Los Angeles federal court, the coalition also disputed government claims that the group has no standing to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the detainees. U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz will hear arguments Thursday.

Mourners thronged the streets of the capital on Wednesday near the home of slain Afghan peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani, while the mystery deepened as to who was behind his assassination a day earlier. Rabbani's death in a suicide bombing cast a perhaps irreversible pall over prospects for drawing the Taliban into negotiations, even though the peace commission he headed had made little progress in the year since its creation. That in turn could hamper Western plans to wind down the combat mission of the NATO force by 2014.

At this year's Los Angeles County Fair, volunteers for a Claremont church group collected 3,000 knitted or crocheted squares that will be used to make afghans for local homeless people. Our Lady of the Assumption volunteers worked on piecing together the afghans at tables in the fair's Home Arts Building, where many fair-goers stopped by to bring donated squares or pick up donated yarn to make the squares. The group collected more than twice as many squares this year as it did at the 1993 fair.