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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012
PAGE 3A
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
- Associated Press
NEWS OF THE WORLD
ASIA
Ethnic fighting a concern for Afghans
Mulah Dawad speaks during an interview in his small shop in Marjah, southern Helmand province, Afghanistan. Dawad scoffed when he recalled the 2010 operation, saying they were told prosperity would follow.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARIJAH, Afghanistan — Patrolling in all-terrain vehicles that whip up clouds of dust, members of Afghanistan's elite Civil Order Police might be viewed as outsiders here in southern Helmand province, an ethnic Pashtun heartland where residents talk wistfully of the Taliban's rule, call NATO troops invaders and refer to Afghan government officials as thieves.
Col. Khalil Rahman and the 441 police under his command in the 3rd Battalion are almost all from northern Afghanistan and belong to minority ethnic groups. Many don't even speak Pashto, the language of most southerners. That could be a recipe for conflict in this majority Pashtun country that descended into a bloody civil war over ethnic lines in the 1990s.
Yet Rahman said he asked for each of his three deployments to Helmand and is planning to settle his bride of two months in the provincial capital, Lashar Gah.
"This is my country, all of it. I asked to come here," said Rahman, 30, whose clean-shaven face and tightly cropped hair contrasts with most local men, who wear unkempt bushy beards and the traditional turban. Still, when they met in the villages, he embraced them in the traditional hug and Pashtu greeting of "May you not get weary."
As the U.S. and NATO close out their mission in Afghanistan preparing for the final withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014, the worry looms large that fresh outbursts of ethnically motivated fighting would send the country into a spiral of chaos and violence that could give al-Qaida the toehold it needs to re-establish camps to plot attacks on Western targets and train wannabe jihadis.
But an Associated Press reporter and photographer who accompanied the 3rd Battalion for a week
"No one helps us," said Abdul Qayyum, who was up to his elbows in mud after stepping away from repairing his sun-baked mud home. "The situation was good before the fighting," he said.
did not observe any hostility among local residents to the Civil Order Police, known as ANCOP. Instead, they channeled much of their anger toward government officials, an international community they said reneged on promises of development and the U.S.-financed Afghan Local Police.
Qayyum was referring to the joint NATO, U.S. and Afghan assault on Taliban bases in Marjah, a sprawling region of dozens of small mud villages with a total population of less than 50,000. The idea behind the February 2010 counterinsurgency operation — the largest in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion — was to kick out the Taliban and make Marjah a model of development and good governance, a shining example of how an area can prosper if it spurs the Taliban and embraces the Afghan government.
AFRICA
Al-Qaida officials linked to U.S. consulate attack
PARIS — Some of the culprits in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had links to al-Qaida's North Africa arm, a top U.S. military official said Wednesday, adding that it remained unclear if the terror network led or organized the deadly assault whose victims
included an American ambassador.
Al-Qaida links had been suspected in the attack on Sept. 11, but not publicly detailed, and an investigation is underway. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three others were killed. The assault occurred around the same time that protests erupted in Muslim countries over an anti-Islam film made in the United States.
Gen. Carter Ham, the head of the U.S. military's Africa Command, said some of the attackers had ties to Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which was built on the remains of a former Algerian militant group.
"Clearly some of these individuals have some linkages to AQIM," Ham told reporters in Paris. "That's not to say that this was an AQIM- organized or organized
or led activity." He did not elaborate.
Associated Press
AQIM and its allies control a vast swath of neighboring Mali. The United States and France are among the Western powers that are worried about the Sahel region of northeastern Mali could become a terrorist haven, and are pushing for international action in the region.
SOUTH AMERICA
Venezuela deports wanted drug lord
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan authorities deported a prominent drug trafficking suspect to Colombia on Wednesday, nearly two months after his capture in an operation aided by Colombian and U.S. authorities.
Colombian officials consider Daniel Barrera one of the country's most-wanted drug lords. Barrera was handcuffed as he led to a waiting plane at Caracas international airport along with two other drug suspects, including a U.S. citizen.
Barrera is known as "El Loco," or "The Madman," and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has called him "the last of the great capos."
Venezuelan Justice Minister Nestor Reverol said Barrera had a false passport when he was captured in September in the southwestern Venezuelan city of San Cristobal.
The 50-year-old Barrera was arrested after Colombian officials,
who had been working with U.S. and British authorities, notified Venezuela that Barrera was making a call from one of dozens of public phones that were being monitored, officials said.
Colombia police say Barrier had been in Venezuela since 2008 and owned ranches worth millions of dollars. Colombian police had offered a reward of about $2.5 million for information leading to his arrest.
The authorities have said Barrera operated in a swath of eastern Colombia including areas along the border in Venezuela, and had a drug smuggling alliance with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.
According to a 2010 grand jury indictment in U.S. District Court in New York, Barrera was both manufacturing and trafficking drugs on a large scale, buying raw cocaine paste from FARC rebels and converting it into cocaine at his labs in eastern Colombia.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Daniel Barrera, one of Colombia's most wanted drug lords, whose alias is "El
Loco Barrena", is escorted in a flak jacket.