SISMI in Afghanistan

None of us have much sympathy for SISMI, the fascist branch of Italian military intelligence, but this statement by Mario D'Auria to Sky News is revealing. You see, his son, Lorenzo D'Auria (whom they say was an expert on Afghanistan), married with 3 kids, was send on a covert operation to monitor Afghanistan's frontier with Iran and was promptly kidnapped -say accounts- by Mullah Khuda-e-Dad, who was going to turn them over to the Taliban. He was riddled with bullets in the rescue operation launched by British special forces and lies mortally wounded in an Italian military hospital.

"He and his partner were sent to make an incursion across the frontier, because the Italian clandestine services were charged with discovering whether weapons were coming through there to satisfy Bush, who's an arms trader himself"

Moreover, Mario says that he cannot go the the hospital to see his son because after his statement to the press, SISMI would have him arrested.

So now the question. Does this not sound like that SISMI has been recruited to plant evidence of Iranian arms smuggling into Afghanistan?

Insecurity in Afghanistan

It's not getting any better....

Report
Insecurity grows in the northern Afghan provinces, spared until now
LE MONDE | 21.05.07 | 14h57 • Mis à jour le 21.05.07 | 14h57
Our Correspondent in Islamabad

Violence has doubled in Afghanistan where a week after the announcement of the death of one of their military chiefs, Mollah Dadullah, the Taliban claimed credit for two suicide bombings that on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 May killed 24 and wounded 50. Fourteen Afghan civilians were killed on Sunday in Gardez (southeast Afghanistan), two hours by car from Kabul when a man detonated his payload in a market after a US military convoy went by.

On Saturday in Kunduz (north) another man detonated his payload near a group of German soldiers who had stopped to shop. Three German soldiers and seven Afghan civilians were killed. These two suicide bombings follow three others that took place Thursday 17 May in Kandahar (South), killing nine and wounding eleven others, including the Afghan Information Minister Abdu al-Karim Khoram.

These bombings, where are less and less the prerogative of the south of the country where the Taliban are the most active, seem to confirm the desire of the militia's leaders to spread their struggle to the rest of the country. The bombing in Kunduz, the most serious since 2003 against German troops, 3,000 of which are deployed in the northern provinces follows another a month ago with killed nine Afghan police in training in a similar manner.

The Province of Paktia, of which Gardez is the capital, is also the prey of increasing insecurity. In this region, the influence of the Taliban, commanded by former Mujahedeen commandant Jalauddeen Haqqani, is asserted more and more.

For its part, NATO is multiplying its operations and has made pubic claims of impressive progress that is impossible to veryify. In a communiqué, NATO claimed to have “driven off or killed more than 100 enemy combatants" over the last two days in the eastern command zone that includes the Provinces of Paktia and Ghazni, where, according to Afghan security forces, “30 Taliban were killed” on Saturday. The Afghan security forces, who are participating in growing numbers in operations, are also taking very heavy casualties, but this is also unverifiable.

Since the beginning of the year, according to calculations from different sources, more than 1,600 people were killed in circumstances linked to the ongoing conflict. Civilians are paying a heavy price and the Red Cross stated on Sunday that 2,000 people are homeless following bombardment by coalition forces led by the United States, which at the end of April struck 14 villages in the Shindand District (west), killing 50 civilians.

Françoise Chipaux

Bloody Sunday in Afghanistan

"Destroy the evidence..."

Via Le Monde

LEMONDE.FR with AP, AFP and Reuters | 04.03.07 | 12h40

Sixteen Afghanis were killed and 25 wounded on Sunday 4 March following a suicide bombing targeting a Coalition convoy and return fire from US troops, who claimed they had fallen into a “complex ambush” on a highway in eastern Afghanistan. But the circumstances in which the civilians died remain ambiguous.

A booby-trapped vehicle driven by a kamikaze exploded near a Coalition patrol, which was then targeted by automatic gunfire “coming from all directions”, according to a coalition communiqué. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The communiqué also said that US troops had responded and that the killing of sixteen civilians and the wounding of another 25 occurred in the initial attack on a highway 45 km east of Jalalbad, near the frontier with Pakistan

But the wounded told AP that US troops had opened fire on cars and pedestrians on the highway. "They shot in all directions, even firing at 14 of 15 cars which happened to be on the road", says Tur Gul, 38, who was at a gas station along the highway and who has been shot twice in the right hand. “They shot at everything and anything, as well as people traveling in their cars and pedestrians", he added.

The Afghani Ministry of the Interior says a “certain number" of civilians perished in the suicide bombing. "According to the coalition, the soldiers then came under fire, but their response killed ten people and wounded 25. An initial police estimate said 8 civilians were killed by the Coalition. The police made no mention of insurgent fire. Contradicting its own press corps, a Coalition spokesman told AFP that it “was not clear at the moment how many civilians were killed in the bombing and how many died from Coalition or insurgent gunfire. “An investigation is ongoing, he added.

Thousands of angry Afghanis then rushed to the scene and briefly blocked the highway. Demonstrators shouted “Death to America, Death to Karzai", before being dispersed. US troops at the scene, who are part of the ISAF coalition commanded by the United States and not by NATO, destroyed images taken by a photographer, an AP cameraman and Afghani journalists, said the AP.