There has been fighting south of Mazar-i Sharif in Samangan province between commanders loyal to Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostam and others loyal to Tajik warlord Ustad Atta Muhammad. 17 were killed late last week in the clashes.
On Friday a powerful bomb destroyed 4 video shops in Gardez, in Eastern Afghanistan, but no one was hurt because they were closed. (The video shops were targeted because Muslim fundamentalists believe that videos are a form of graven image, forbidden in Islam as it is in Orthodox Judaism. Islamic iconoclasm is rooted in Jewish iconoclasm, historically. That is, the bombings were signs of active Taliban or al-Qaeda cells still operating in Afghanistan).
A large bomb went off in Kabul on Saturday near the Department of Defense and the US embassy, but again, there were no casualties.
Old time Mujahid and Islamic radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (more or less created by Ronald Reagan) has joined with Taliban remnants to threaten U.S. troops with suicide bombings.
On Sunday, a bloody struggle broke out between warlords in Paktia province near the provincial capital of Gardez, leaving nine dead. One of those killed is a former commander of Padshah Khan Zadran, who has gone into opposition against the Karzai government.
On Sunday Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith [associated with the conservative pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy], visited Kabul to say that once the international aid came, everything would be all right. Perhaps he is right, but I doubt it. More resources would be more things for the warlords to fight over. The US continued dependence on warlords to run Afghanistan is increasingly worrisome, as is the obvious instability.
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