22 die in Taliban attack on police station

At least 22 people died when hundreds of suspected Taliban fighters seized control of a police station in southern Afghanistan at the weekend, one of the most serious attacks against the government for a year.
[more]

Taliban wrests control of Zambul from US

The Taliban has wrested control of most of Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan-- for the first time recapturing a province since being ousted from power by the US military in November 2001-- geopolitical analytical firm Stratfor reported.
[...]

It said Zabul is of strategic and military importance for a number of reasons. Taking Zabul cuts off US troops stationed to the south in Kandahar from the bulk of US troops located to the north toward Kabul, it said, and given that Helmand and Oruzgan provinces to the north of Zabul already are Taliban strongholds, the group can better try to isolate US and local provincial troops in Kandahar and eventually attempt to retake Kandahar as well.
[more]

  thanks to CalPundit

AFGHANISTAN

Canadians In Kabul Are Not Peacekeepers

Some 1,900 Canadian troops are joining the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (more Orwellian Pentagonspeak) in Afghanistan, the alliance's first deployment outside Europe, and a mission recalling the relief of besieged Beijing by European and Japanese troops during China's 1901 Boxer Rebellion.

These ISAF soldiers are called "peacekeepers" by uninformed media; their mission is hailed as a humanitarian operation to bring "stability" to war-ravaged Afghanistan.

We should understand these soldiers are not true peacekeepers, like Canadian troops in Cyprus, but rather auxiliaries of U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan whose strategic mission is to secure control of Central Asian oil.

The Canadians and other NATO troops garrisoning Kabul are duplicating the role of U.S. Marines sent to Beirut in 1982. Washington billed the Marines as "peacekeepers" in Lebanon's bloody civil war. In reality, the Marines were sent to prop up the Israeli-dominated Christian Phalangist regime in its war against Syrian-backed Muslim groups. When 240 Marines were killed by a truck bomb, Americans were outraged their "peacekeepers" had become a target. Americans - and the Marines - simply did not understand they had been dropped in the middle of a civil war as full-fledged combatants.
[more]