Maybe this is a start to a new trend ?
Hezb-i-islami is asking for a peace deal with Afghanistan , if this goes through the rest of the Taliban may follow ?
maybe some but there will be some die hards who will hold out till they are killed !
How will the Afghan people let these rejects of Islam back into society after they
have killed so many of their own people ?
Foxnews
KABUL—Afghanistan's second-largest insurgent group after the Taliban said it sent a delegation to Kabul to negotiate a peace deal with the government and coalition forces, possibly marking the biggest split in insurgent ranks since the war began.
The five-member delegation of Hezb-i-Islami, a movement led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has already arrived in Kabul, said the group's spokesman Haroon Zarghoon, who is based in Pakistan. The delegates plan to meet President Hamid Karzai, U.S. officials and others "to discuss Hezb-i-Islami's agenda on how to bring durable peace to Afghanistan," Zarghoon told The Wall Street Journal.
As Hezb-i-Islami's representatives held meetings in Kabul, the Taliban fired a series of rockets against the city Sunday night, hitting the military side of Kabul's international airport and the capital's Pul-e-Charki district, U.S.-led international forces said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Though the Afghan insurgency is dominated by the Taliban and the affiliated Haqqani network, Hekmatyar's group boasts thousands of fighters and has carried out hundreds of attacks against coalition forces and Afghan troops, mostly in its traditional strongholds in Afghanistan's northeastern and northern provinces.
A reconciliation between Hezb-i-Islami and the Kabul government won't end the eight-year-old war by itself. But, if achieved, it would weaken the insurgency—and likely prompt some senior Taliban commanders to cut their own deals with Karzai.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Afghan Militants Seek Peace Deal
Monday, March 15, 2010
U.S. transfers prison, 2,900 ex-insurgents to Iraq
Just a few more months and Iraq will have complete control of their Prisons !
I hope they keep the Inmates as Inmates !
(Reuters) - The U.S. military handed over a $107 million prison and nearly 3,000 inmates to the Iraqi government on Monday as it prepares to leave Iraq seven years after ousting Saddam Hussein.
The formal transfer of the detention center at Camp Taji, a sprawling U.S. base north of Baghdad, is part of a plan to unwind a U.S. detention program in Iraq that cost $500 million a year at its peak.
U.S. forces had taken into custody about 90,000 people since the 2003 invasion. By August, there will only be about 100 in U.S. custody, said Major General David Quantock, head of detention operations.
"At one point our guard force was over 10,000 and now we're going to go to a guard force of around 100 by the first of September, all part of the responsible drawdown plan to get U.S. forces down to 50,000," he said.
The U.S. detention centers in Iraq were being closed or transferred to the Iraqi government under a bilateral security pact signed by Iraq and the United States in 2008. The largest, Camp Bucca in the southern desert near Kuwait, was shut down last September.
The last, Camp Cropper located near Baghdad airport, will be turned over to Iraq on July 15, Quantock said.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
NATO: Missile Kills 13 Insurgents in Afghanistan
Hell yeah !
Foxnews
KABUL — Thirteen insurgents were killed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan by a missile that international forces fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle, NATO said.
NATO said coalition troops saw a group of insurgents near a safe house preparing ammunition as well as insurgent mortar teams moving equipment in the Naw Zad area of Helmand province. The international force launched one missile, killing the 13 militants.
On Monday, another missile fired from an unmanned aircraft killed three insurgents farther south in the Nad Ali district of Helmand, NATO said.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Iraqi forces seize 140 insurgent suspects in Mosul
Is Iraq starting to take an interest in Taking back their Country from Militant Muslims , Like Al Qaida ?
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi troops have arrested 140 suspected al Qaeda members and other Sunni Arab militants in the past four days in raids on the northern city of Mosul, security officials said on Saturday.
Mosul is the last urban stronghold of a largely Sunni Arab insurgency that comprises Islamist groups such as al Qaeda plus some members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party.
"This operation targets al-Qaeda and Baathists in the city ... and those collaborating with them," said Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari.
He added the number of Iraqi forces had been increased around the city to cordon off insurgent activity.
A local security official who declined to be identified said the crackdown, conducted by an elite Iraqi anti-terrorist unit from Baghdad, netted 140 suspected insurgents. A hundred of the detainees had been moved to jails in Baghdad, he said.
He said that 100 others were still wanted by authorities.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Iraq insurgents proud to be on U.S. terror list
Martyrdom is a Point of Pride also !
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraq-based Shi'ite insurgent group rejoiced at the U.S. government's decision to designate it a foreign terror organization, calling it a point of pride, a U.S. militant monitor said Monday. Just days after Kata'ib Hizballah was designated a foreign terror group by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, the group posted a triumphant message on a Shi'ite jihadist forum praising the move, according to SITE Intelligence.
"It is an invitation to pride that the children of Hezbollah Brigade be put on the list that frightens the occupation, chases them and plants terror in their hearts," SITE described the message as saying.
"Classifying us on the American terror list means that we are still marching on the right path," it said.
The designation for the group, which the United States believes is linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah, means the Iraq-based militant group's assets will be frozen and Americans will be prohibited from providing it with any resources.
Washington blames the group for numerous bomb and other attacks in Iraq, including a November 2008 rocket attack that killed two United Nations workers.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost
Surprise! it's about time someone in the news is saying something good about Iraq!
A/P
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BAGHDAD - The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
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Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.
Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.
This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press this past week there are early indications that senior leaders of al-Qaida may be considering shifting their main focus from Iraq to the war in Afghanistan.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the AP on Thursday that the insurgency as a whole has withered to the point where it is no longer a threat to Iraq's future.
"Very clearly, the insurgency is in no position to overthrow the government or, really, even to challenge it," Crocker said. "It's actually almost in no position to try to confront it. By and large, what's left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on."
Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring — now a quiet though not fully secure district.
Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are now in Iran. Still talking of a comeback, they are facing major obstacles, including a loss of support among a Shiite population weary of war and no longer as terrified of Sunni extremists as they were two years ago.
Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.
The premature declaration by the Bush administration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003 convinced commanders that the best public relations strategy is to promise little, and couple all good news with the warning that "security is fragile" and that the improvements, while encouraging, are "not irreversible."
Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shiite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, corruption. Any one of those could rekindle widespread fighting.
But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military's hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.
Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.
That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.
Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war — four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.
Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.
In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.
Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.
The questions facing both Americans and Iraqis are: What kinds of help will the country need from the U.S. military, and for how long? The questions will take on greater importance as the U.S. presidential election nears, with one candidate pledging a troop withdrawal and the other insisting on staying.
Iraqi authorities have grown dependent on the U.S. military after more than five years of war. While they are aiming for full sovereignty with no foreign troops on their soil, they do not want to rush. In a similar sense, the Americans fear that after losing more than 4,100 troops, the sacrifice could be squandered.
U.S. commanders say a substantial American military presence will be needed beyond 2009. But judging from the security gains that have been sustained over the first half of this year — as the Pentagon withdrew five Army brigades sent as reinforcements in 2007 — the remaining troops could be used as peacekeepers more than combatants.
As a measure of the transitioning U.S. role, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond says that when he took command of American forces in the Baghdad area about seven months ago he was spending 80 percent of his time working on combat-related matters and about 20 percent on what the military calls "nonkinetic" issues, such as supporting the development of Iraqi government institutions and humanitarian aid.
Now Hammond estimates those percentage have been almost reversed. For several hours one recent day, for example, Hammond consulted on water projects with a Sunni sheik in the Radwaniyah area of southwest Baghdad, then spent time with an Iraqi physician/entrepreneur in the Dora district of southern Baghdad — an area, now calm, that in early 2007 was one of the capital's most violent zones.
"We're getting close to something that looks like an end to mass violence in Iraq," says Stephen Biddle, an analyst at the Council of Foreign Relations who has advised Petraeus on war strategy. Biddle is not ready to say it's over, but he sees the U.S. mission shifting from fighting the insurgents to keeping the peace.
Although Sunni and Shiite extremists are still around, they have surrendered the initiative and have lost the support of many ordinary Iraqis. That can be traced to an altered U.S. approach to countering the insurgency — a Petraeus-driven move to take more U.S. troops off their big bases and put them in Baghdad neighborhoods where they mixed with ordinary Iraqis and built a new level of trust.
Army Col. Tom James, a brigade commander who is on his third combat tour in Iraq, explains the new calm this way:
"We've put out the forest fire. Now we're dealing with pop-up fires."
It's not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace.
Maj. Gen. Ali Hadi Hussein al-Yaseri, the chief of patrol police in the capital, sees the changes.
"Even eight months ago, Baghdad was not today's Baghdad," he says.
