Gates Wants Afghan Withdrawal to Leave Combat Troops

“I would try and maximize my combat capability as long as this process goes on — I think that’s a no-brainer,” he said. “I’d opt to keep the shooters, and take the support out first.”

Mr. Gates also said he anticipated that the administration would conduct a review of force levels in Afghanistan that went far beyond simply announcing the number of troops returning home starting in July, as pledged by President Obama.

The administration was likely to create what Mr. Gates called “bookends,” an initial number to be withdrawn beginning in July and a date by which all of the 30,000 reinforcements sent last year would have departed Afghanistan.

His comments came during a farewell tour across south and southwestern Afghanistan, home to most of the 30,000 additional troops sent by Mr. Obama to push back a tenacious insurgency.

At each stop, the troops asked Mr. Gates about future force levels. He noted that many of the logistical, engineering and construction units sent to build housing and lay runways to support the surge now could be sent home while leaving the combat force undiminished.

He said that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, had not yet given the president formal options for withdrawing the 30,000 surge troops. A separate timetable would manage the departure of all foreign troops, including the rest of the American combat force beside the surge units, about 70,000 troops, by the end of 2014 as agreed by NATO and the Afghan government.

The decisions on forces in Afghanistan could mirror how Mr. Obama managed the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While a status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad requires American combat forces to leave by the end of this year, Mr. Obama unilaterally set an earlier date by which the military first reduced its presence to 50,000.

Senior Pentagon officials noted that after Mr. Obama set a firm deadline for dropping to 50,000 troops in Iraq, he then let his commanders in Baghdad manage the specifics of which units to order home and when, so long as they met the president’s ultimate timeline.

A similar system may be decided by the administration to manage the withdrawal of the surge units from Afghanistan, officials said, with General Petraeus, and his nominated successor, Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, given the leeway to decide how to draw down forces to meet the president’s deadline.

Mr. Gates advocated sustaining the combat force to continue pressing the insurgency to give up the fight and negotiate reconciliation with the government in Kabul. With continued success on the battlefield, Mr. Gates said, such talks could begin in earnest by late this year.

Mr. Gates also said the reduction of American troops should be carefully calibrated so as not to give allied nations “reason to rush to the exits.”

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Gates Wants Afghan Withdrawal to Leave Combat Troops

 

“I would try and maximize my combat capability as long as this process goes on — I think that’s a no-brainer,” he said. “I’d opt to keep the shooters, and take the support out first.”

Mr. Gates also said he anticipated that the administration would conduct a review of force levels in Afghanistan that went far beyond simply announcing the number of troops returning home starting in July, as pledged by President Obama.

The administration was likely to create what Mr. Gates called “bookends,” an initial number to be withdrawn beginning in July and a date by which all of the 30,000 reinforcements sent last year would have departed Afghanistan.

His comments came during a farewell tour across south and southwestern Afghanistan, home to most of the 30,000 additional troops sent by Mr. Obama to push back a tenacious insurgency.

At each stop, the troops asked Mr. Gates about future force levels. He noted that many of the logistical, engineering and construction units sent to build housing and lay runways to support the surge now could be sent home while leaving the combat force undiminished.

He said that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Afghanistan, had not yet given the president formal options for withdrawing the 30,000 surge troops. A separate timetable would manage the departure of all foreign troops, including the rest of the American combat force beside the surge units, about 70,000 troops, by the end of 2014 as agreed by NATO and the Afghan government.

The decisions on forces in Afghanistan could mirror how Mr. Obama managed the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While a status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad requires American combat forces to leave by the end of this year, Mr. Obama unilaterally set an earlier date by which the military first reduced its presence to 50,000.

Senior Pentagon officials noted that after Mr. Obama set a firm deadline for dropping to 50,000 troops in Iraq, he then let his commanders in Baghdad manage the specifics of which units to order home and when, so long as they met the president’s ultimate timeline.

A similar system may be decided by the administration to manage the withdrawal of the surge units from Afghanistan, officials said, with General Petraeus, and his nominated successor, Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, given the leeway to decide how to draw down forces to meet the president’s deadline.

Mr. Gates advocated sustaining the combat force to continue pressing the insurgency to give up the fight and negotiate reconciliation with the government in Kabul. With continued success on the battlefield, Mr. Gates said, such talks could begin in earnest by late this year.

Mr. Gates also said the reduction of American troops should be carefully calibrated so as not to give allied nations “reason to rush to the exits.”

View the original article here

Militants Storm Afghan Government Building

KABUL – Insurgents wearing police uniforms and armed with suicide vests stormed a police compound in eastern Afghanistan early Sunday morning, killing three policemen in a gunfight that lasted four hours before Afghan and NATO security forces regained control of complex, government officials said.

The dawn attack occurred a mile east of the provincial capital of Khost, a volatile province bordering the tribal areas of Pakistan that have served as a haven for militants crossing into Afghanistan. It follows a pattern of attacks this spring in which insurgents wearing Afghan military or police uniforms have attacked fortified government compounds. On Saturday, a suicide bomber believed to be wearing an army uniform blew himself up in a tent on the grounds of the national military hospital in the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing at least six people who were training to be medics and wounding more than 20 others.

In Sunday’s attack, four men in Afghan border police uniforms got out of a corolla station wagon and rushed toward the traffic police department and killed the gate security guard, according to a police officer who witnessed the assault just as we was coming on duty.

“They were in ABP uniforms,” the officer, who asked not to be named, said. “I thought, what do they want this early in the morning at the traffic police department. Then they shot the guard.”

The militants ran inside and then began firing down from the top floors onto a small police base below that housed a detachment of quick reaction forces, said Mohammed Yaqoob Noorzia, the deputy provincial police chief. The men were wearing vests laden with explosives and were armed with rocket propelled grenades and AK-47s, he said.

Afghan and NATO security forces surrounded the compound and firefight ensued. A spokesman with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force could not say if NATO troops engaged in the firefight. “We’re still getting information on it, everything is sketchy right now,” the spokesman said.

The shooting finally stopped four hours later, leaving three police officers dead and wounding four others, including a civilian who was passing by, Mr. Noorzia said. The fate of the gunmen was not immediately known.

“We don’t know how many of the suicide bombers blew themselves up and how many were killed in the firefight with police,” Mr. Noorzia said.

The attacks have raised concerns about Taliban infiltration in the Afghan national security forces, but also underscore the ease with which militants, posing as soldiers or police officers, can blend into the ranks and bypass security checkpoints.

Meanwhile, two women were killed and five other people were wounded in Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan Sunday when their vehicle hit a roadside mine, officials said.

An employee of The New York Times in Khost contributed reporting.

View the original article here

To Lead Afghan War, Obama Chooses Marine Known for Swaying Sunnis in Iraq

General Allen is not well known beyond the Marine Corps and national security circles. But he was President Obama’s first choice to succeed Gen. David H. Petraeus, easily the most recognizable officer in the American military, in no small part for his work enticing Sunni tribal elders in the restive Anbar Province of Iraq to turn their backs on the insurgency and foreign fighters and to join the American cause during 2007 and 2008.

Mr. Obama described General Allen as “the right commander for this vital mission” in Afghanistan. “As a battle-tested combat leader, in Iraq he helped turn the tide in Anbar Province,” the president added.

To be sure, Afghanistan is not Iraq. The regimented tribal structure that allowed the United States to build an indigenous counterinsurgency force by winning over the sheiks in western Iraq cannot be perfectly replicated in Afghanistan, a society whose social structures have been destroyed by decades of war. And the enemy in Afghanistan is far more entrenched and experienced.

But military officers who work with General Allen, 57, say he understands the complex challenges presented by commanding a campaign in Afghanistan that is as much diplomatic and economic as military in a nation with a historic, and understandable, distrust of foreigners.

He told Mr. Obama as much himself on Thursday, turning from the lectern to look straight in the president’s face and say, “I understand well the demands of this mission.”

General Allen has a reputation as a strategic thinker, and he holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University and the National War College. He was the first Marine officer inducted as a term member into the Council on Foreign Relations, and he served as a Marine Corps fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He also will be the first Marine to be the top commander in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Marine Corps colleagues cite his abilities to understand the consequences of military and political actions on all parties in a conflict — enemies, allies and civilians. They say those insights played a significant role in the successes of the Anbar Awakening, as the Sunni counterinsurgency in Iraq was known.

During his deployment as the second in command in Anbar Province, General Allen spoke of how the Marines operated as a “shock absorber” between the local officials and the central government in Baghdad.

Their role was especially relevant because Sunni tribal elders deeply distrusted the Shiite-dominated national government, even as they were turning away from supporting an insurgency that was seeking to bring down that government and throw out its American backers.

“The challenge for us is to connect the province to the central government,” General Allen said at the time, in words that apply just as well across Afghanistan today.

He spoke of the dynamic tensions between military force and economic development that prompted Anbar sheiks to turn on the insurgents and foreign terrorists. “Out here it’s been ‘Who can defend his people?’?” General Allen said in describing a typical conversation with a Sunni tribal elder. “After the war it’s ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’?”

If the Senate confirms him as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, the allied coalition in Afghanistan, General Allen will move to Kabul in September. In the interim, he will be assigned as a special assistant to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to prepare for command.

He has served in the Pentagon as a senior officer developing policy for Asia and the Pacific region. From his current post as the No. 2 officer at the Central Command, overseeing American military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, he has been involved in planning for the Afghanistan mission.

 

To Lead Afghan War, Obama Chooses Marine Known for Swaying Sunnis in Iraq

General Allen is not well known beyond the Marine Corps and national security circles. But he was President Obama’s first choice to succeed Gen. David H. Petraeus, easily the most recognizable officer in the American military, in no small part for his work enticing Sunni tribal elders in the restive Anbar Province of Iraq to turn their backs on the insurgency and foreign fighters and to join the American cause during 2007 and 2008.

Mr. Obama described General Allen as “the right commander for this vital mission” in Afghanistan. “As a battle-tested combat leader, in Iraq he helped turn the tide in Anbar Province,” the president added.

To be sure, Afghanistan is not Iraq. The regimented tribal structure that allowed the United States to build an indigenous counterinsurgency force by winning over the sheiks in western Iraq cannot be perfectly replicated in Afghanistan, a society whose social structures have been destroyed by decades of war. And the enemy in Afghanistan is far more entrenched and experienced.

But military officers who work with General Allen, 57, say he understands the complex challenges presented by commanding a campaign in Afghanistan that is as much diplomatic and economic as military in a nation with a historic, and understandable, distrust of foreigners.

He told Mr. Obama as much himself on Thursday, turning from the lectern to look straight in the president’s face and say, “I understand well the demands of this mission.”

General Allen has a reputation as a strategic thinker, and he holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University and the National War College. He was the first Marine officer inducted as a term member into the Council on Foreign Relations, and he served as a Marine Corps fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He also will be the first Marine to be the top commander in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Marine Corps colleagues cite his abilities to understand the consequences of military and political actions on all parties in a conflict — enemies, allies and civilians. They say those insights played a significant role in the successes of the Anbar Awakening, as the Sunni counterinsurgency in Iraq was known.

During his deployment as the second in command in Anbar Province, General Allen spoke of how the Marines operated as a “shock absorber” between the local officials and the central government in Baghdad.

Their role was especially relevant because Sunni tribal elders deeply distrusted the Shiite-dominated national government, even as they were turning away from supporting an insurgency that was seeking to bring down that government and throw out its American backers.

“The challenge for us is to connect the province to the central government,” General Allen said at the time, in words that apply just as well across Afghanistan today.

He spoke of the dynamic tensions between military force and economic development that prompted Anbar sheiks to turn on the insurgents and foreign terrorists. “Out here it’s been ‘Who can defend his people?’?” General Allen said in describing a typical conversation with a Sunni tribal elder. “After the war it’s ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’?”

If the Senate confirms him as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, the allied coalition in Afghanistan, General Allen will move to Kabul in September. In the interim, he will be assigned as a special assistant to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to prepare for command.

He has served in the Pentagon as a senior officer developing policy for Asia and the Pacific region. From his current post as the No. 2 officer at the Central Command, overseeing American military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, he has been involved in planning for the Afghanistan mission.

 

To Lead Afghan War, Obama Chooses Marine Known for Swaying Sunnis in Iraq

General Allen is not well known beyond the Marine Corps and national security circles. But he was President Obama’s first choice to succeed Gen. David H. Petraeus, easily the most recognizable officer in the American military, in no small part for his work enticing Sunni tribal elders in the restive Anbar Province of Iraq to turn their backs on the insurgency and foreign fighters and to join the American cause during 2007 and 2008.

Mr. Obama described General Allen as “the right commander for this vital mission” in Afghanistan. “As a battle-tested combat leader, in Iraq he helped turn the tide in Anbar Province,” the president added.

To be sure, Afghanistan is not Iraq. The regimented tribal structure that allowed the United States to build an indigenous counterinsurgency force by winning over the sheiks in western Iraq cannot be perfectly replicated in Afghanistan, a society whose social structures have been destroyed by decades of war. And the enemy in Afghanistan is far more entrenched and experienced.

But military officers who work with General Allen, 57, say he understands the complex challenges presented by commanding a campaign in Afghanistan that is as much diplomatic and economic as military in a nation with a historic, and understandable, distrust of foreigners.

He told Mr. Obama as much himself on Thursday, turning from the lectern to look straight in the president’s face and say, “I understand well the demands of this mission.”

General Allen has a reputation as a strategic thinker, and he holds advanced degrees from Georgetown University and the National War College. He was the first Marine officer inducted as a term member into the Council on Foreign Relations, and he served as a Marine Corps fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He also will be the first Marine to be the top commander in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Marine Corps colleagues cite his abilities to understand the consequences of military and political actions on all parties in a conflict — enemies, allies and civilians. They say those insights played a significant role in the successes of the Anbar Awakening, as the Sunni counterinsurgency in Iraq was known.

During his deployment as the second in command in Anbar Province, General Allen spoke of how the Marines operated as a “shock absorber” between the local officials and the central government in Baghdad.

Their role was especially relevant because Sunni tribal elders deeply distrusted the Shiite-dominated national government, even as they were turning away from supporting an insurgency that was seeking to bring down that government and throw out its American backers.

“The challenge for us is to connect the province to the central government,” General Allen said at the time, in words that apply just as well across Afghanistan today.

He spoke of the dynamic tensions between military force and economic development that prompted Anbar sheiks to turn on the insurgents and foreign terrorists. “Out here it’s been ‘Who can defend his people?’?” General Allen said in describing a typical conversation with a Sunni tribal elder. “After the war it’s ‘Who was able to reconstruct?’?”

If the Senate confirms him as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, the allied coalition in Afghanistan, General Allen will move to Kabul in September. In the interim, he will be assigned as a special assistant to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to prepare for command.

He has served in the Pentagon as a senior officer developing policy for Asia and the Pacific region. From his current post as the No. 2 officer at the Central Command, overseeing American military operations across the Middle East and Central Asia, he has been involved in planning for the Afghanistan mission.

 

Afghan Officials Try to Limit Damage From Prison Break

 

Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of Kandahar Province, where the prison break occurred, announced that security forces had detained steadily mounting numbers of escaped detainees throughout the day. By day’s end, however, he conceded that while 71 people had been detained, the descriptions of only 41 men matched those of escapees.

The effort to reassure people with news of the captures failed to instill much confidence, and the most immediate effect of the jailbreak was a mounting sense among Afghans that government corruption, incompetence and complacency were as much to blame as the Taliban.

In comments on a Facebook page linked to an interview program on Tolo, a major television network here, viewers expressed anger and a complete lack of faith in the government.

“The escape of 500 Taliban from prison?” Jahanbakhash Ahmadi wrote. “This is impossible that it can happen without the help of the government.”

Another, Mard Arya, said: “Is it possible for prisoners to dig tunnels more than 100 meters long over five months and none of the prison officials knew about it? Don’t be ridiculous.”

It did not help that the prison escapes came after a month of security lapses, which have left people feeling insecure and distrustful of the government, even though assassinations and attacks in Kandahar have fallen sharply this year.

In early April, Kandahar security forces fired on crowds, killing nine people, during protests over the burning of the Koran by a pastor in the United States. On April 15, the security forces were unable to protect the Kandahar police chief (or were bribed not to), allowing a suicide bomber to enter the police headquarters and reach an area near his office where the bomber killed him and two other police officers.

Then, early Monday, despite the presence of dozens of prison guards and police officers, nearly 500 prisoners escaped, leaving many Kandahar civilians fearful that the escaped prisoners will soon launch attacks in Kandahar.

“We don’t know what the security forces are doing,” said Hajji Khairullah, a shopkeeper in central Kandahar. “If you look at the prison, it is fortified with berms and T-walls all around — you can’t imagine that an ant could get in there — but now we heard the huge and shocking news that hundreds of inmates have managed to escape through an underground tunnel.”

“This escape will affect the civilians,” he added. “I blame these security forces for not taking action. This is not the first time.”

The provincial governor, who has been critical of the security forces after each of the recent breaches, has seemed powerless to improve the situation, leaving people unsure whom to turn to.

“How do prisoners break locks in jail?” asked a Kandahari who has watched the security forces closely over the years, but asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. He was referring to prisoners’ ability to leave their cells in order to go to the cell with the tunnel entry.

“How can it be that no one noticed? What was the National Directorate of Security doing?” he said, referring to Afghanistan’s intelligence service. “Why weren’t they watching?”

A memorandum from the Justice Ministry to President Hamid Karzai’s senior aides appeared to confirm people’s fears that there was no one who could be trusted — a point the Taliban have been eager to make in carrying out their attacks.

“This is an information campaign by the Taliban; that’s the main point of these operations,” said a Western official, adding that the insurgents want to send the message that the Afghan government is weak.

The Justice Ministry’s memo raised questions about complicity by people working in the prison and the surrounding neighborhood where the tunnel emerged. The memorandum noted that digging such a long tunnel and emptying the soil could not have gone unnoticed by neighbors and security forces because “it takes a lot of time and a means of transportation to carry the soil away.”

Also noted in the memo was that the police supposedly searched the house where the tunnel began two and a half months ago, yet noted nothing suspicious.

Finally, the memo said: “Escape of all inmates through a tunnel in one room indicates cooperation and planning from inside the prison.”

The head of the team investigating the escape, Mohammed Tahir, further cemented the likelihood that there was complicity from a number of people. He described the tunnel as so carefully planned and sophisticated that it appeared that engineers must have been involved, not merely men with shovels.

“The tunnel was dug in a very professional way,” he said. “They have used an electrical system and a ventilation system and small shovels and pickaxes for digging and wheelbarrows for removing the soil.”

The conclusion reached by some Kandaharis was almost melancholy: the Taliban care more about their fighters than the government of Afghanistan does about its own people.

“The prison break indicates how much the Taliban are loyal to each other,” said Abdul Naji, a businessman in Kandahar.

“It shows how much they are trying to free their men, even digging a several-hundred-meter-long tunnel despite heavy security forces in the area,” Mr. Naji said. “It is beyond imagination.”

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

 

Diplomat Is Expected to Receive Afghan Post

WASHINGTON — President Obama will most likely soon nominate the veteran diplomat Ryan C. Crocker to be the next United States ambassador to Afghanistan, an administration official said Tuesday.

Ryan C. Crocker at a Senate committee hearing last July.

The move would pair Mr. Crocker, a former United States ambassador to Iraq, with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the Afghanistan war commander he worked with closely while the two men were in Iraq during the Bush administration. It would also begin what is expected to be a year of changes in Mr. Obama’s war command. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are both expected to leave their posts soon.

Mr. Crocker would succeed Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general and the current ambassador, who also plans to leave soon, the administration official said. General Eikenberry has had a distant relationship with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan ever since a leaked diplomatic cable surfaced in which General Eikenberry criticized Mr. Karzai as an inadequate strategic partner for the United States.

Mr. Crocker would be taking over the embassy in Afghanistan just as the Obama administration is expected to begin withdrawing American troops from the country, a process that is expected to take several years.

The pending appointment of Mr. Crocker was first reported by The Associated Press. The administration official said a final decision had not yet been made.

Mr. Crocker has also held senior diplomatic posts in Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. He took over as the American ambassador to Iraq in 2007, just as President George W. Bush’s troop increase was getting under way, and he worked closely with General Petraeus in the ensuing years.

Mr. Crocker is the dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

 

Hundreds of Prisoners Escape from Afghan Prison

。 Taliban claims responsibility for digging 320-meter escape tunnel

VOA News ?April 25, 2011

Afghan officials say more than 400 prisoners, many of them Taliban insurgents, have escaped through a tunnel from the main prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.? ?

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for digging the 320-meter tunnel to the prison over a five-month period, bypassing government checkpoints.

The Taliban says its construction efforts finally reached the prison late Sunday, when the prisoners began their escape to freedom.

In 2008, hundreds of prisoners, including members of the Taliban, escaped from the same prison when insurgents blew open the gates.

Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

[All VOA blogs...]

Going Green
Watch Rebecca Ward's report on the BP?Gulf oil spill - one year later.

 

Suicide Bomber Attacks Afghan Defense Ministry

KABUL, Afghanistan — An insurgent wearing an Afghan Army uniform and a vest laced with explosives opened fire inside the heavily fortified Ministry of Defense headquarters on Monday, killing at least two soldiers, a ministry spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said the intended target was France’s minister of defense, Gérard Longuet, who was scheduled to visit the compound later in the day. Soldiers shot the attacker before he could detonate his vest, said the Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zahir Azimi.

The attack was the third in three days on government compounds by insurgents disguised as members of the Afghan national security forces. Their seemingly easy access to even the most heavily guarded locations has intensified concerns over Taliban infiltration of the police and military forces, just as they are preparing to take over security from the American-led coalition in some parts of the country this summer and the entire country by the end of 2014.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a Taliban spokesman, said the insurgent was from Panjshir Province — the heartland of the Northern Alliance, which helped the United States oust the Taliban in 2001 — and had been serving in the Afghan Army for three years.

But General Azimi said such assertions were premature. “We don’t know whether he was a member of the army or not,” he said. “All I can say is that he was wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. It doesn’t mean he was an army soldier. We are doing our investigation to find out.”

General Azimi said the attacker entered the compound about 11:30 a.m. and opened fire, killing two soldiers and wounding seven close to the defense minister’s office before being fatally shot. An explosives ordnance team then defused his vest. The defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, was not present at the time, General Azimi said.

Soldiers continued searching the compound, which covers several city blocks in downtown Kabul, looking for other possible attackers late into the afternoon. Contrary to earlier reports, the general said no hostages had been taken. A doctor at Kabul’s military hospital said three soldiers had been killed; there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the death toll.

Mr. Longuet, who had arrived on Sunday to meet with French troops deployed here, was not in the ministry at the time of the attack, according to the military command in Paris. He had been scheduled to attend a joint news conference with Afghan military officials at 1:30 p.m.

It was the latest in a string of attacks aimed at Afghan government and military officials in what the Taliban has called the beginning of its spring offensive. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed five NATO service members in eastern Afghanistan. A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed the police chief of Kandahar Province. In both attacks, the bombers were dressed in Afghan Army or police uniforms.

“Using these kinds of attacks is very useful for us in recruiting someone and working inside Afghan forces,” Mr. Mujaheed, the Taliban spokesman, said in a telephone interview after Saturday’s attack. “This inflicts more casualties and does not cause any civilian casualties.”

He added, “We have many more youths who are already in Afghan military ranks waiting for their chance to attack.”

General Azimi said the government was working to root out insurgents from the army and police forces, but acknowledged that the task was daunting. “We have set up a security team who is watching suspicious people inside military forces, but it’s hard to recognize them,” he said.

Even when they are not in the military, insurgents have easy access to police and army uniforms, General Azimi said. An elder in a remote village in the eastern province of Paktika, along the Pakistan border, recently told a reporter for The New York Times that insurgents had been showing up in his village dressed in Afghan Army and police uniforms.

“You know, finding uniforms is easy,” General Azimi said. “They can find it anywhere, and they can make it. People sell military equipment in the bazaar. We have collected and confiscated uniforms several times, but again it’s hard to collect all of them. Besides, you can find them in the provinces as well.”

The attack on the Defense Ministry was just part of a bloody two days for Afghan security forces. In Ghazni Province, south of the capital, six police officers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, said Musa Khan Akbar Zada, the provincial police chief.

Three more police officers were killed Sunday night in Oruzgan Province when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, said the provincial police chief, Fazal Ahmad Shirzad.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Scott Sayare from Paris, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.

 

Afghan war 'threatens Pakistan'

 11 April 2011 Last updated at 04:49 ET Mr Zardari said US politicians lacked understanding of the situation The Afghan war is "destabilising Pakistan" and undermining democratic development, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari says.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper he said there was widespread concern at the pace of efforts to bring an end to conflict in Afghanistan.

It comes as ties between Pakistan and the US struggle to recover after the row over CIA contractor Raymond Davis.

Correspondents say it is one of his strongest statements on Afghanistan.

"Just as the Mexican drug war on US borders makes a difference to Texas and American society, we are talking about a war on our border which is obviously having a huge effect," Mr Zardari told the Guardian.

"I think it is maybe 12 years since America has become engaged in Afghanistan and obviously everybody's patience is on edge, especially the American public, which is looking for answers," he is also quoted as saying.

Mr Zardari also said the security situation was undermining attempts to bolster democratic institutions weakened during the military rule of his predecessor, Gen Pervez Musharraf.

"Democracy is evolving. It's a new democracy. It takes time to bring institutions back," he said.

Anti-US sentiment

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan in Karachi says that many in Pakistan feel that the US continues to point fingers at the country's instability, while directly contributing to it with its actions along the Afghan border.

Pakistan's leadership increasingly feels its support for the US war in Afghanistan is costing it dear, in terms of popular support, our correspondent says.

He adds that anti-US sentiment, among both ordinary Pakistanis and the country's top civil and military leaders, remains high.

Last month a Pakistani court freed a US CIA contractor after acquitting him of two counts of murder, when relatives of two Pakistani men he shot dead pardoned him in court.

The case had stoked anti-American feeling across Pakistan and led to angry demonstrations. Hardline religious parties were keen to see him punished. The controversy damaged relations between the US and Pakistan.

Meanwhile, a recent White House report said Pakistan lacked its own plan to fight insurgents in the country.

But President Zardari told the Guardian that this was not true and that most US politicians lacked an understanding of the situation.

"The United States has been an ally of Pakistan for the last 60 years. We respect and appreciate their political system. So every time a new parliament comes in, new boys come in, new representatives come in, it takes them time to understand the international situation, " he said in the interview.

Mr Zardari's statements are likely to meet with approval from Pakistan's security establishment, which increasingly feels the US is taking its Pakistani alliance for granted, says our correspondent.