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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Mini Mini Battlefield Digest: Afghanistan, Week 45

notes:

South Korea and Japan withdrawing support/forces ...

Canadians continue in apparently fierce fighting.

The damage to "COIN" from "losing" districts to the Taliban is ... significant.

[Iraq digest, here.]

Battlefield News, Afghanistan

Political Developments and Major Campaign Resource Shifts

  • Roggio: Taliban commander Mullah Mansour Dadullah issued a tape admitting links to al Qaeda in Iraq and denied links with Iran. -Thursday, November 1, 2007
  • Roggio: South Korea will withdraw its 210 troops in the north by the end of the year. -Monday, November 5, 2007
  • AP: Japanese warships were ordered home from the Indian Ocean Thursday after opposition lawmakers refused to support an extension of their mission supporting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. -Thursday, November 1, 2007
  • Reuters: Iran publicly hanged two Afghans for the rape of a Dutch woman on Wednesday, state news agency IRNA said, the latest execution in what the government calls a crackdown on immoral behaviour. -Wednesday, November 7, 2007
COIN: Actions, Reactions, Counteractions, etc.
  • Roggio: The Taliban seized the Khak-e Sefid district in the western province of Farah; this is the third district in Farah to fall in the past week. -Monday, November 5, 2007
  • Xinhua: Afghan troops backed by the U.S.-led Coalition forces have destroyed six heroin labs in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province, local police said Monday. -Monday, November 5, 2007
  • Reuters: Taliban insurgents have captured a third district in western Afghanistan, local officials said on Monday, defying Western assertions the rebels are unable to mount large military offensives. -Monday, November 5, 2007
  • Reuters: Canadian forces have halted a Taliban offensive to take a key district guarding the approaches to Afghanistan's main southern city of Kandahar, a spokesman said on Thursday. -Friday, November 2, 2007
  • RFE/RL: Much of the world's attention on Afghanistan is now focused on the country's Pashtun-dominated south and east, where Taliban fighters are battling NATO troops and U.S.-led coalition forces. But there is a different kind of tension... -Sunday, November 4, 2007
VIOLENCE: Tactical Developments
  • AFP: Afghan and international security forces killed 25 Taleban in an area of southern Afghanistan that has witnessed days of deadly clashes, officials said Sunday. The 25 were killed Saturday in an operation by Afghan police and soldiers... -Monday, November 5, 2007
  • AP: The death toll from a suicide blast targeting a group of lawmakers and children rose to 60 on Wednesday, the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. -Wednesday, November 7, 2007
  • Reuters: A suicide bomber killed 90 people and wounded 50 on Tuesday in an attack on a delegation of visiting parliamentarians in the northern Afghan town of Baghlan, the director of the local hospital said. -Tuesday, November 6, 2007
  • AP: A roadside bomb blast killed four Afghan police on Sunday, while 25 militants were said to be killed in a clash in the country's south, officials said. -Sunday, November 4, 2007
  • AFP: Corporal Ronald Groen is the 12th Dutch soldier killed in Afghanistan, either accidentally or in combat. -Saturday, November 3, 2007
  • AP: A missile destroyed a suspected militant hide-out in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border Friday, killing 10 people inside and wounding 11, security officials said. -Friday, November 2, 2007
  • Bloomberg: Afghan security forces killed a rebel commander and several of his men as they crossed the border from Pakistan, the U.S. military said. -Thursday, November 1, 2007
Economic Developments, Reconstruction, and General Good News

[this space purposely left blank because of lack of de-classified, systematic data]

  • AP: Close to 90,000 children who would have died before age 5 in Afghanistan during Taliban rule will stay alive this year because of advances in medical care in the country, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday. -Sunday, November 4, 2007