Well of course, this is in the south where the Taliban reigns. The north is a completely different story, that’s Northern Alliance territory.

3-December-KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Militants blew up one vehicle and ambushed another in volatile southern Afghanistan, killing a district government chief and three police officers and wounding eight others, authorities said today. They blamed Taliban insurgents for both attacks.

In one attack, a remote-controlled bomb blast ripped through a pickup truck Friday evening on a road in the Shah Wali Kot district, 50 kilometres north of the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, deputy district police chief Obaidullah Khan said.

District administration chief Hayatullah Popul and two police officers traveling with him were killed, and three other officers were seriously wounded, Khan said. Later, district police chief Abdul Qadar said 21 suspected Taliban insurgents had been detained since the attack, including five who were found with improvised explosive devices.

“Detained”? Would that be propagandaspeak for “questioned in a safehouse” like the one Jack Idema was imprisoned for having? Tsk tsk!

Suicide bombings in Afghanistan? Say it ain’t so. That’s an Al Qaeda terrorist technique, not a technique the Taliban is known for using. Must be that while they were hiding in Pakistan, they learned some things from their buddies in Al Qaeda.

Kandahar, btw, is the largest city in southern Afghanistan. It was, in fact, the home base of the Taliban as they rose and took control of most of the country in the late 1990s. The only area that is completely rid of the Taliban is the United Front Military Forces (Northern Alliance)-controlled northern Afghanistan area. Sounds to me as though the Taliban is staking their claim in the south–and SF Ops and other military forces have their hands tied because they’ve been relegated to not fighting terrorists, but bodyguard “peacekeeping” type roles. I hope policy changes rapidly so they’re allowed to go ahead and do the work they were trained to do–not this social worker role that the leftists would have them do while letting the terrorists run through the streets setting off roadside bombs, shooting people and blowing themselves up.