UN: Assassinations soar in Afghanistan

SINA | Monday 11th March, 2013 | Insurgent attacks on Afghan government employees soared last year by a staggering 700 percent even as the overall civilian death toll from the war fell, the United Nations said Tuesday. The targeted killings of women in government service by Taliban-led insurgents was "particularly disturbing", the UN mission in Afghanistan said in its annual report on civilian casualties. (READ MORE)

Afghanistan's Colossal Intelligence Failure

From The AfPak Channel by Jennifer Rowland | Close observers of Afghanistan are not likely to be surprised by recent allegations contained in a United Nations report that the Afghan National Security Directorate, the CIA's leading counterterrorism partner in South Asia, used whips and electric shocks to squeeze confessions out of suspected insurgent detainees. There are many ways to describe the directorate, or NDS as it is locally known, but a model of modern intelligence gathering and investigative efficiency is not one of them.
The report, which was quietly published on the website of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on Sunday, details a grim pattern of abuse and mistreatment in NDS prisons, and has put yet another dent in NDS's reputation at a time when the Afghan intelligence agency has never been more vulnerable. A key partner in the ongoing U.S. quest to contain transnational terrorism in South and Central Asia, NDS seems to have fallen on very hard times of late. Yet, few in Washington appear ready to confront the implications of NDS's downward spiral, a trend that seems to be accelerating as NATO marches toward the exit.
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