Last week an investigation by McClatchy Newspapers revealed that many low-level operatives and people only thought to be "associated with armed groups have been killed in the US drone attacks in Pakistan.

In the first independent analysis of the Obama Administration's internal accounting of the strikes, McClathcy found that of about 482 people killed between September 2010 and September 2011, at least 265 were not senior Al Qa'eda leaders. More than 40 of the 95 drone strikes in the same period hit groups other than Al Qa'eda.

The reports also estimated that there was one civilian casualty during that time.

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy joins Al Jazeera English's Inside Story Americas to discuss the report.

Before that item, the programme considers the disapperance of tousands of legal documents, concerning detainees at Guantanamo Bay, from secure Department of Defense servers.

The incident has delayed military tribunals for the detainees, some of whom have been held since 2002.

Pakistani insurgent Nek Muhammad, the first victim of a CIA drone strike in 2004 (Photo: Kamran Wazir/Reuters)

Mark Mazzetti writes for The New York Times:

Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.

Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. But in recent months, calls for transparency from members of Congress and critics on both the right and left have put pressure on Mr. Obama and his new C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to offer a fuller explanation of the goals and operation of the drone program, and of the agency’s role.

Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the C.I.A. and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of C.I.A. officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.

Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.

Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the C.I.A. into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.

As he puts it, “This is just not an intelligence mission.”

Read full article....

In a pre-trial hearing on 28 February in military court, Private Bradley Manning --- detained since May 2010 --- explains why he passed videos and hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks.

At the hearing, Manning pled guilty to 10 reduced charges;h however, the Government said it will pursue all 22 original counts, including aiding the enemy --- which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison --- and espionage. The trial begina in June.

The unofficial transcript of the remarks has also been posted.

An extract from the testimony, in which Manning describes one of the leaked videos, showing US military fire killing civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007:

Al Jazeera English reports:

A bomb in southwestern Pakistan has killed at least 84 people and left more than 200 others injured, rights activists and officials say.

The death toll rose on Sunday, after more bodies were pulled overnight from the rubble left in the wake of the explosion, officials said.

Local community leaders told Al Jazeera that rescue workers and victims' families were still identifying bodies, and that the death toll was likely to rise further.

The improvised explosive device, which was attached to a vehicle outside a vegetable market in Quetta, targeted Pakistan's minority Shia population.

The vehicle was packed with about 800kg of explosives, and caused nearby buildings to collapse, officials said.

Activists say women and children were shopping for groceries in the Hazara Town enclave at the time of the attack.

"Rescuers and volunteers are hesitant to go near the blast site for fear of another explosion", Haider Changezi, a Shia Muslim activist in Pakistan, told Al Jazeera at the time of the explosion.

The fear of follow-up attacks targeting the Hazara Shia population comes a month after twin blasts killed at least 90 people on Alamdar Road, another mainly Hazara area of the provincial capital of Balochistan.

Many of the wounded were in critical condition, hospital officials said, leading to fears that the death toll could rise still further.

Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Islamabad, said the entire area of the attack in Hazara Town has been cordoned off by security officials.

Syed Qamar Haider Zaidi, a spokesman for local Shia Muslim groups, condemned the Pakistani government for not providing protection to the community and announced three days of mourning and protest over the attack.

Hazara Town, one of two Hazara enclaves in Quetta, is considered to be less economically affluent than Alamdar Road, "poor families suffered", Changezi told Al Jazeera.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the armed pro-Sunni sectarian group, claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack.

The group also carried the January 10 twin bombings that killed more than 90 and led to a 76-hour sit-in demanding protection from the targeted killings. It has been banned since 2001.

Read full article....

The discussion begins about the 8:00 mark.

Irfan Ali, in glasses, taking part in a demonstration in Islamabad in September

See also Pakistan News: 114 Killed in Thursday Bombings

On Thursday bomb attacks by insurgent and separatist Baluch groups in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Mingora killed at least 115 people. Among the dead in Quetta was Irfan Ali, a prominent human rights activist.

Robert Mackey reports for the New York Times that Ali’s death sparked an outpouring of grief and anger, as well as tributes to a life supporting human rights causes, across Twitter and the Internet:

Among those killed by the second blast was a rights activist, Irfan Ali, 33, who was helping the injured. Just before his death, he noted on his @khudialiTwitter feed that he had narrowly escaped the fist blast. Then he postedanother message, registering his dismay that the group behind the attack had also succeeded in driving some Hazara families out of their homes. The families who moved out, he wrote in his final words on Twitter, had “finally succumbed to the genocidal pressure,” from the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. It was, he noted, a “sad day for diversity in Baluchistan,” the northwestern province that has Quetta as its capital.

#Hazara families of #Machh,Khuzdir finally succumbed to the genocidal pressure&moving out. Sad day for diversity in #Balochistan.

— irfan (@khudiali) January 10, 2013

As my colleague in Islamabad explained in a telephone interview with the PBS Newshour, the Persian-speaking, Shiite Muslim Hazara community “immigrated from Afghanistan about a century ago” and “has suffered a series of attacks at the hands of Sunni death squads over the last couple of years.” More than 100 Hazaras were killed last year, and some of the killers are from militant groups believed to have links to the country’s security services.

As news of Mr. Ali’s death spread, he was mourned by fellow activists, bloggers and journalists online. Dozens of tributes to him were posted on Twitter; his Facebook page filled with words of sympathy and respect for his battles for peace and against sectarianism.

just talked to mother of @khudiali- dear friend, peace activist and a smiling face. He is no more. Martyred in today's blast in Quetta

— Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi (@Ali_Abbas_Zaidi) January 10, 2013

The journalist and blogger Shiraz Hassan uploaded an image of Mr. Ali wearing a T-shirt that spelled out the word “Coexist” in symbols from different religions, and quoted the dead man’s Twitter biography:

"I am born to fight for human rights & peace. My religion is respect and love all the religions." -@khudiali, RIP twitter.com/ShirazHassan/s…

— Shiraz Hassan (@ShirazHassan) January 10, 2013

His colleagues at the Youth Peer Education Network, a United Nations affiliate, wrote on Facebook:

Today, is a day of great loss for all of us, the entire Y-Peer family, and the whole Pakistani nation. 103 people lost their lives today in different attacks in Quetta and Swat, but out of 69 who died in a sectarian attack on a bustling billiard hall in the southwest city of Quetta, one is Irfan Ali — a great human rights activist, peace lover and a district focal point of Y-Peer Pakistan — who lost his life while taking the victims of the first blast to the hospital. And in the second blast, he become prey of those who want to divide the humanity on the basis of sects, religions, and who kill people for the sake of their own interest. But this shameful act will not let them achieve their objectives, as there are hundreds and thousands of young people like Irfan Ali, who are brave enough to take the lead, and work for peace and harmony in their communities. Let us pray for Irfan Ali and his brother-in-law who lost their lives. May their souls rest in peace. Amen.

Read full article....

(Photo: Dawn)

Katherine Houreld reports for Reuters:

The death toll from a series of bombings in two Pakistani cities on Thursday, one of the bloodiest days in the country's history, has reached 114, police said Friday.

The majority of deaths were caused by a sectarian double bombing in the western provincial capital of Quetta.

The bombings underscored the myriad threats Pakistani security forces face from homegrown Sunni extremist groups, the Taliban insurgency in the northwest and the less well-known Baloch insurgency in the southwest.

Police officer Mir Zubair Mehmood said 82 people were killed and 121 injured in Quetta when a suicide bomber targeted a snooker club and a car bomb blew up nearby 10 minutes later. Nine police and 20 rescue workers were among those killed in the second blast.

"It was like doomsday. Bodies were lying everywhere," said Mehmood.

The banned Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi claimed responsibility for the attack in a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood whose residents are ethnic Hazaras.

Earlier in the day, a separate bomb killed 11 people in Quetta's crowded main market.

The United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for that blast. The group is one of several fighting for independence for Balochistan, an arid, impoverished region with substantial gas, copper and gold reserves.

Quetta is the capital of Balochistan, a province that constitutes just under half of Pakistan's territory and is home to about 8 million of the country's population of 180 million.

In a separate attack in Mingora, the largest city in Swat valley, at least 21 people were killed when an explosion targeted a public gathering of residents who had come to listen to a religious leader.

No one claimed responsibility for that bombing. Swat has been under army rule since a military offensive expelled the Taliban in 2009.

The Taliban insurgency in the northwest has launched a string of attacks in recent weeks, including a suicide attack on Peshawar airport, the kidnap and execution of 21 paramilitary forces and a suicide attack killing a leading politician.

Pakistan's security forces and its overburdened justice system are struggling to cope. Human rights groups say the government must investigate whether some of the groups have links to elements within Pakistan's security services. 

Maulvi NazirTalat Farooq writes for EA:

Last Wednesday night, two US drone strikes killed 13 militants in Pakistan’s tribal agency of South Waziristan. The dead included Maulvi Nazir, a key Taliban commander and the head of a breakaway faction of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP), which is fighting the Pakistani state for being "un-Islamic" and an ally of the US.

Nazir, along with another senior Taliban commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, split from the TTP in opposition to its bombing campaign inside Pakistan, instead fighting US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Nazir agreed to a peace deal with Islamabad in 2007 in a joint bid to counter TTP insurgents. In 2009 he signed a non-aggression pact with the Pakistan army ahead of its military operation in the tribal areas of South Waziristan. Despite this accommodations with Islamabad, Nazir was a target for the US because he was close to the Haqqani network, a faction of the Afghan Taliban blamed for some of the most high-profile attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.

Indeed, Nazir's manoevres posed a challenge to the US-Pakistani partnership. Viewing TTP as its major threat, the Pakistani establishment welcomes in-fighting between different factions, as this distracts the insurgency from violent attacks against Pakistani military and civilian targets. Islamabad would prefer the US to confront the TTP faction under Hakimullah Mehsud, rather than militants like Nazir who do not overtly threaten the Pakistani state. This stance sharply contrast with the Obama Administration’s view of Nazir as an al-Qaeda ally and a staunch supporter of the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

According to a retired Pakistani intelligence official, Nazir’s killing has not gone down well with the Islamabad security establishment, as remnants of the Mullah's ffaction may rejoin the TTP and its attacks on the Pakistani government and the military.

There is a counter-narrative, however. Nazir’s killing may reflect improved US-Pakistan military and intelligence ties since October. The following month, Afghanistan's Karzai Government presented a model for reconciliation, requesting Pakistan’s assistance in convincing the Afghan Taliban to participate in the peace process with a view to the NATO and US withdrawal in 2014. The Paris Conference in December brought the first face-to-face talks between the Taliban and the representatives of the Karzai Government and other Afghan stakeholders.

On 7 December, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, the head of Pakistan's armed forces, categorically supported the Afghan peace process at a meeting of top military commanders. Kiyani’s growing support for dialogue may be driven by a realisation that the US is intent on adhering to its plans for withdrawal from Afghanistan. His stance should also be seen against the backdrop of the TTP's domestic terrorist attacks.

It is likely that Pakistan and the US have finally reached some kind of resolution on how to deal with the complex relations between Afghan Taliban, the TTP, and Al Qa'eda on the one hand and between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US on the other. For Islamabad, this may have involved agreement on joint operations and continued intelligence sharing vis-s-vis Al Qa'eda and TTP operatives. That has brought US economic and security assistance with the release of $600 million from the Coalition Support Fund and another $200 million for the Bhasha Dam.

The Americans may also be willing to accommodate Pakistan’s reservations about direct military action against the powerful and pro-Pakistan Haqqani group in North Waziristan. Pakistan did not protest Washington's recent terrorist label for the Haqqani network, instead using to push the Haqqani leadership towards negotiations. At the same time, there may be tacit understanding for indirect cooperation over dispensable Taliban militants.

And Maulvi Nazir may have contributed to his end by recent actions antagonising the Pakistani Government. He attacked the polio vaccination drive in South Waziristan in June 2012, claiming that the programme was cover for American intelligence operations, and he demanded an end to drone strikes in the tribal region. Last month, nine workers helping the anti-polio vaccination campaigns were killed by unidentified gunmen, and the slaying of five female teachers and two aid workers have been linked to the dispute over immunisation. These developments followed an insurgent attack on a Pakistani air force base in Peshawar.

Two days after Nazir’s killing, both General Kiyani and Prime Minister Raja Ashraf made statements which appeared to damp down any public tension with Washington --- they said the real threat to Pakistan’s national security is internal and not external.

Nazir's death does not seem to set off an immediate crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad. Still, it is a reminder of the fragility of those relations amid the complexity of the Afghan issue, the murkiness of insurgency and counter-insurgency, and the inherent contradictions in the so-called Pakistan-US "alliance against terrorism".

Mullah Nazir

Mullah Nazir, some have told us, is the latter. He might be roaming on Pakistani territory with his armed gangs, terrorising local populations, stopping aid workers from immunising Pakistani children from diseases like polio, and adding to the insecurity in the nation, but still.... He does most of his dirty work in Afghanistan, and since Afghanistan and Pakistan are "enemies", he should not have been harmed. Indeed, he should have been protected. 

I have not seen those making the argument explain how it is good to leave Pakistani children vulnerable to polio or to have gangs threatening Pakistan's citizens. I have not had an explanation why more weapons, more bombs, and more killing of civilians is positive. The reality is that people like Mullah Nazir do not just seek to kill Afghans, but to make life miserable for Pakistanis as well.   

This idea of the "good Taliban" is not just illogical. It is dangerous. 

How exactly did these militants gain a foothold in Pakistan? Could it be that they insisted to the Pakistani military establishment, "We are good" as they jumped the border from Afghanistan, pursued by the US military from 2001?

People like Mullah Nazir are good to Pakistan in their own minds, the same way their Taliban friends in Afghanistan believe they are good for Afghans. To them, being good means a make-over of all civil, military, and bureaucratic institutions and then installing themselves as the Government, the military, and the bureaucracy. 

It is time the Pakistani government stopped making distinctions. Any armed group of fundamentalists that operates outside the law is bad for the State --- whether they claim to love Pakistan or hate it. Islamabad must act to stop them and it must act now. 

Because Pakistan is --- at this point --- a far better place than Afghanistan in the late 1990s. 

Mullah Nazir (Photo: AFP)

Ten people were killed including Taliban warlord Mullah Nazir and several others injured in multiple US drone strikes carried out in the South and North Waziristan tribal regions on Thursday.

In the attack in South Waziristan, an unmanned drone fired two missiles at a vehicle killing six people in the Sar Kanda area of Birmil in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal district of South Waziristan.

While talking to Dawn.com, local Taliban and intelligence sources confirmed the killing of pro-government and anti-US Taliban commander Mullah Nazir along with five of his companions near Wana.

Local political administration officials while talking to Dawn.com also confirmed the killing of Mullah Nazir.

Nazir’s funeral was observed in Azam Warsak area, 10 kms from Wana.

Mullah Nazir was the main militant commander in South Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt considered a base for Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militants, and a powerful elder in the Wazir tribe.

Nazir, who was wounded in a suicide attack in South Waziristan on November 29, confined his militant activities to Afghanistan, where he opposed the presence of US and Nato troops fighting an 11-year Afghan Taliban insurgency.

He, as well as North Waziristan commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, was understood to be close to the Al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, a faction of the Afghan Taliban blamed for some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan.

Another Pakistani security official said Nazir and his fighters were targeted as they were trying to swap vehicles when their double cabin pick-up encountered a mechanical fault.

Two of his influential deputies Atta Ullah and Rafey Khan were among those killed, the official added.

Another militant commander Rata Khan was believed to have been killed in the attack.

Nazir’s fighters have previously been targeted by US drone strikes. He reached a peace deal with Islamabad in 2007 and had testy relations with the Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a domestic insurgency since 2007.

Separately, four people were killed and several others injured in a drone attack in the Mubarak Shahi village in North Waziristan tribal region’s Mir Ali Tehsil.

The US drone targeted a vehicle with two missiles, and then fired another two missiles when rescuers gathered at the site to carry the bodies and the injured.

The death toll from the drone strike in North Waziristan was expected to rise, security sources told Dawn.com.

There were reports of a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Faisal, affiliated with the Hakimullah group, being killed in the strike along with two Uzbek militants, sources said.

Kimberly Kagan backs increased US military forces in Afghanistan, June 2010: "We can reverse the Taliban's momentum"

I have long been interested in the ongoing place in US foreign policy of a "State-private network", documenting and evaluating how those in the "private" sector come to work closely with the Government in the pursuit of its objectives.

I have also been interested for years in the specific case of General David Petraeus --- four-star General, former head of Central Command, recently-resigned head of the Central Intelligence Agency --- who used his own extensive network among Washington's media and "think tanks" to build up his personal position and thus shape US foreign policy from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond.

This week Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post posted a story which neatly brought these two themes together:

Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, a husband-and-wife team of hawkish military analysts, put their jobs at influential Washington think tanks on hold for almost a year to work for Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Provided desks, e-mail accounts and top-level security clearances in Kabul, they pored through classified intelligence reports, participated in senior-level strategy sessions and probed the assessments of field officers in order to advise Petraeus about how to fight the war differently.

Their compensation from the U.S. government for their efforts, which often involved 18-hour workdays, seven days a week and dangerous battlefield visits?

Zero dollars.

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain “completely independent,” the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war.

Petraeus allowed his biographer-turned-paramour, Paula Broadwell, to read sensitive documents and accompany him on trips. But the entree granted the Kagans, whose think-tank work has been embraced by Republican politicians, went even further. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior U.S. military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

The Kagans used those privileges to advocate substantive changes in the U.S. war plan, including a harder-edged approach than some U.S. officers advocated in combating the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction in eastern Afghanistan, the officials said.

The pro-bono relationship, which is now being scrutinized by military lawyers, yielded valuable benefits for the general and the couple. The Kagans’ proximity to Petraeus, the country’s most-famous living general, provided an incentive for defense contractors to contribute to Kim Kagan’s think tank. For Petraeus, embracing two respected national security analysts in GOP circles helped to shore up support for the war among Republican leaders on Capitol Hill.

Fred Kagan, speaking in an interview with his wife, acknowledged the arrangement was “strange and uncomfortable” at times. “We were going around speaking our minds, trying to force people to think about things in different ways and not being accountable to the heads” of various departments in the headquarters, he said.

The extent of the couple’s involvement in Petraeus’s headquarters was not known to senior White House and Pentagon officials involved in war policy, two of those officials said. 

Read full article....

Slate presents a map, based on information to June from the New American Foundation and updated with media reports since then, of US drone strikes in Pakistan in the Bush and Obama Administrations.

While striking, the map may be conservative in its presentation. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found earlier this month that "the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation have been under-recording credible reports of drone civilian casualties in Pakistan by a huge margin".

Qutbuddin Kohi writes for the Afghan news service Pajhwok:

A suicide attacker killed nearly 36 people, including security men and civilians, when he blew himself up outside a mosque in the Mainmana City, capital of northern Faryab province on Friday.

The brazen attack took place at about 9:30 am in front of a mosque’s entrance in the provincial capital when worshippers were congregating for the Eid al-Adha celebration.

Police official Maj. Mohammad Naeem said the attacker detonated his explosives among the security forces when police chief and other security officers were leaving the mosque after Eid prayer.

He said 19 Afghan National Police (ANP) personnel, three army soldiers were killed and 20 others injured. Fourteen civilians, including two children, aged between nine and 12 years, also perished in the morning blast.

A doctor on duty at the Afghan-Turk hospital, Qasim Parsa said the exact number of casualty is not clear as yet but fears the figures could be in dozens.

He urged the victims' relatives and the public to donate blood to the injured victims.

A Pajhwok journalist, reporting from the Afghan-Turk hospital, said frantic relatives were searching for the bodies of their loved ones. 

Najibullah, whose relative was injured in the bombing, said: "Several of my relatives are missing and I fear they might be among the killed."

Anyone who carried out the suicide attack during the sacred festival of Eidul Adha is condemnable, he said.  

Security officials are yet to comment on the identity of the attacker.

One of the injured police said: "We were leaving the mosque when a man wearing police uniform approached us, we guessed he is our colleague but suddenly he detonated his explosives."

So far no group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Maimana City.

Protest in Pakistan earlier this month against US drone strikes

Greg Miller writes for The Washington Post:

The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.

The outcome has broad implications for counterterrorism policy and whether the CIA gradually returns to being an organization focused mainly on gathering intelligence, or remains a central player in the targeted killing of terrorism suspects abroad.

In the past, officials from the Pentagon and other departments have raised concerns about the CIA’s expanding arsenal and involvement in lethal operations, but a senior Defense official said that the Pentagon had not opposed the agency’s current plan.

Officials from the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon declined to comment on the proposal. Officials who discussed it did so on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of the subject.

One U.S. official said the request reflects a concern that political turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa has created new openings for al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

“With what happened in Libya, we’re realizing that these places are going to heat up,” the official said, referring to the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. No decisions have been made about moving armed CIA drones into these regions, but officials have begun to map out contingencies. “I think we’re actually looking forward a little bit,” the official said.

White House officials are particularly concerned about the emergence of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, which has gained weapons and territory following the collapse of the governments in Libya and Mali. Seeking to bolster surveillance in the region, the United States has been forced to rely on small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes.

Meanwhile, the campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen has heated up. Yemeni officials said a strike on Thursday — the 35th this year — killed at least seven al-Qaeda-linked militants near Jaar, a town in southern Yemen previously controlled by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the terrorist group’s affiliate is known.

The CIA’s proposal would have to be evaluated by a group led by President Obama’s counter­terrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, officials said.

The group, which includes senior officials from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, is directly involved in deciding which alleged al-Qaeda operatives are added to “kill” lists. But current and former officials said the group also plays a lesser-known role as referee in deciding the allocation of assets, including whether the CIA or the Defense Department takes possession of newly delivered drones.

Read full article....

Photo: Reuters

The attack took place at about 6:45 a.m. (0215 GMT) on the edge of the capital Kabul near the airport. The bomber blew herself up alongside a minivan, carrying foreigners who worked for the courier company ACS. Two police were wounded. 

A senior police officer said six of the dead foreigners were Russian and South Africans. One of the Afghans killed was a street-side tyre fixer.

Hizb-i-Islami, the second-largest insurgent group after the  Taliban, claimed responsibility, saying it was carried out to avenge the US-made film "The Innocence of Muslims". A spokesman claimed 14 employees of the US embassy in Kabul were killed in the Tuesday’s attack in which 200 kilograms of explosives were used.

Hizb-i-Islami is led by Gulbuddin Hekmatayar, who has vied for power for more than two decades. At times, he has been allied with the US, but he turned against the Americans during the war in Afghanistan after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Tuesday's bombing follows a series of deadly events in which four US and two British soldiers were shot dead by suspected Afghan police, the Taliban destroyed six US fighter jets in an attack on a major base, and an airstrike killed eight Afghan women.

American officials say that most joint US-Afghan military operations have been suspended following the Sunday killing of the four US troops. “We’re to the point now where we can’t trust these people,” a senior military official said. "It's had a major impact on our ability to conduct combat operations with them, and we're going to have to back off to a certain degree."

The suspensions of the joint operations are indefinite: according to one official, they “could last three days or three months.