Taliban use 'honey trap' boys to kill Afghan police

(Hat tip: KimR) - The Taliban are using child sex slaves to mount crippling insider attacks on police in southern Afghanistan, exploiting the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi" -- paedophilic boy play -- to infiltrate security ranks, multiple officials and survivors of such assaults told AFP.
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Taliban is capturing Afghanistan's $1 trillion mining wealth

Taliban fighters aren't just making gains on the battlefield: They're also bleeding away a revenue source that is crucial for Afghanistan to pay for its military without US help. --The Afghan government will earn about $30 million in 2015 from its mineral sector for the third straight year, far short of a previous projection of $1.5 billion, according to Mines and Petroleum Minister Daud Shah Saba. That's also a quarter of what smugglers -mostly linked to the Taliban and local warlords -earn annually selling rubies and emeralds, he said.

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Islamic State is making these Afghans long for the Taliban

When the Islamic State fighters seized the Mahmand Valley, they poured pepper into the wounds of their enemies, said villagers. Then, they seared their hands in vats of boiling oil. A group of villagers was blindfolded, tortured and blown apart with explosives buried underneath them. --“They pulled out my brother’s teeth before they forced him to sit on the bombs,” recalled Malik Namos, a tribal elder who escaped the valley along with thousands of other villagers. “They are more vicious than the Taliban, than any group we have seen.”

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WSJ: Release of Taliban Detainees Alarms Afghan Villagers

SHEYKHAN, Afghanistan—Taliban forces led by Mohammed Fazl swept through this village on the Shomali plain north of Kabul in 1999 in a scorched-earth offensive that prompted some 300,000 people to flee for their lives.

Fifteen years later, local residents here are responding with fear and dismay to the U.S. release of the notorious commander, along with four other Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American prisoner of war who was held by the Taliban. The group released a video on Wednesday showing the hurried handover a few days earlier of the American captive, looking gaunt and dazed.

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Afghanistan: Catch-and-release of Taliban fighters angers troops

WASHINGTON EXAMINER, 12/7/2010 by Sara A. Carter - More than 500 suspected Taliban fighters detained by U.S. forces have been released from custody at the urging of Afghan government officials, angering both American troops and some Afghans who oppose the policy on the grounds that many of those released return to the battlefield to kill NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians. Read more at the Washington Examiner... Read More......

News on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Pakistan Launches Offensive on Terror Stronghold - Pakistan launched a much-awaited ground offensive in the Al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan early Saturday, the toughest test yet in the U.S. ally's struggle against militants aiming to topple the state. Read more at FOX News...

Poll: Growing Disapproval Of Obama On Afghanistan - A growing plurality of Americans now disapproves of the job Obama is doing on Afghanistan -- and far more trust Gen. Stanley McChrystal to make the next steps than trust the president. Read more at FOX News...

3 U.S. Troops Killed in Afghan Bomb Attacks - KHOST, Afghanistan — Bomb attacks in Afghanistan claimed the lives of three US soldiers, officials said on Saturday, as NATO and Afghan forces killed 25 Taliban fighters in separate assaults. Read more at FOX News...

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Taliban Fighters Attack Outposts, U.S. Troops Killed in Battle

KABUL, Oct. 4 (Hat tip: Patricia Anderson) -- Firing rockets and rifles, Taliban militiamen attacked American and Afghan military outposts in a daylong siege on Saturday that killed eight U.S. soldiers and two Afghan security forces in one of the deadliest battles in months, according to U.S. and Afghan officials. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Major military operation under way in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Marines and Afghan security forces moved into Taliban-infested villages Wednesday evening in one of the Obama administration's first major military operations in the previously forgotten war in Afghanistan. ∴ The offensive was launched shortly after 1 a.m. local time in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. More than 4,000 Marines and an estimated 650 Afghan soldiers and police sought to clear insurgents from towns and villages along the Helmand River Valley before the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election.

"Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson said in a statement.

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