{"id":57093,"date":"2014-12-14T08:28:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-14T13:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57093"},"modified":"2014-12-14T15:55:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T20:55:02","slug":"afghan-president-defiant-after-recent-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57093","title":{"rendered":"Afghan President defiant after recent violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a link sent to us by Ex-PH2 from MSN<\/a>, violent attacks against Afghans is on the rise this week as we get closer to the much anticipated withdrawal date for US troops. 21 people were killed in separate attacks, the count included two US troops.<\/p>\n

The Americans were killed Friday in a bombing of a convoy near the Bagram military base, north of Kabul, the capital. The fatalities were initially reported as two NATO soldiers, but a U.S. defense official in Washington confirmed the two were Americans, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Atiqullah Raufi, the head of the Supreme Court\u2019s secretariat, died after gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire as he left his house in the Afghan capital for work Saturday morning, killing him instantly, said Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Late Saturday afternoon, gunmen \u2014 again on motorbikes \u2014 fatally shot 12 workers clearing unexploded mines in the volatile southern province of Helmand. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

By nightfall, the death toll rose again when a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a bus carrying Afghan soldiers in Kabul, killing six people and wounding more than 10, including a young girl, Stanikzai, the police spokesman, said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Associated Press<\/a> reports that the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, condemned the attacks and pledged to remain resilient in the face of the increasing assaults;<\/p>\n

In his speech Sunday, Ghani offered no specifics about his plans to combat the surging insurgents. His administration has embarked on a top-to-bottom review of the country’s military and security strategy, promising to remove provincial governors and other security officials.<\/p>\n

The uptick in Taliban attacks come after Ghani signed a bilateral security agreement with Washington and a status of forces agreement with NATO that his predecessor Hamid Karzai declined to sign. U.S. President Barack Obama also has approved an expanded combat mission authorizing American troops to engage Taliban insurgents \u2014 not just al-Qaida \u2014 and to provide air support when needed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, at least, for a change, the Afghan government isn’t blaming the US for deaths of Afghans as with the previous administration there. According to Iranian propaganda machine, Press TV<\/a>, more than 8,000 Afghan civilians have been murdered by Taliban there, this year.<\/p>\n

UPDATED:<\/strong> From the Department of Defense; the two US soldiers who were killed yesterday were with the 3rd Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. They were: Sgt. 1st Class Ramon S. Morris, 37, of New York, New York; and Spc. Wyatt J. Martin, 22, of Mesa, Arizona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a link sent to us by Ex-PH2 from MSN, violent attacks against Afghans is on … Afghan President defiant after recent violence<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}