By RAY RIVERA, SHARIFULLAH SAHAK and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: November 28, 2011
Target killings across Afghanistan have risen. American and Afghan officials believe that many are the work of Haqqani militant network and Al-Qaeda that are charged with killing suspected informants and terrorizing the populace on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Military intelligence officials say that the units act as death squads, and they also say that Khurasan has been responsible for at least 250 assassinations and public executions. Khurasan operates mainly in Pakistan's tribal areas.
There is also another group, but its name is not known. The group works mainly in Afghanistan and may be responsible for at least 20 killings in Khost Province over the summer.
The article reports:
It is another indication that the Haqqanis, a mostly Pakistan-based faction, remain the most dangerous part of an insurgency that makes full use of a porous and often ill-defined border, as the NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend showed. Though the circumstances of that strike remain murky, it has now further upset relations between Pakistan and the United States, even as it once again demonstrated how havens inside Pakistan remained a critical part of the insurgent strategy. (New York Times)No matter what happened, the relation between Pakistan and the United Sates has not got worsened.
The percent of assassinations in Afghanistan is growing.
Across Afghanistan, assassinations have jumped 61 percent, to 131 reported killings, through the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2010, according to NATO statistics. United Nations officials say they began noticing a sharp increase in 2010, with 462 assassinations according to their records, double the number from the previous year. The figures may not include many killings in remote areas, like the mass beheading, because fearful villagers never reported them. (New York Times)
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