Obama: Osama bin Laden's death does not end fight against al Qaeda Key dates in the hunt for Osama bin Laden

CBS News was told that the courier was "trusted" by bin Laden. "We identified areas where this courier and his brother operated, but they had extensive operational security," said the official -- and those elaborate security procedures made the U.S. even more suspicious of whom they were catering to.

Four years ago, the United States learned the man's identity, which officials did not disclose, and then about two years later, they identified areas of Pakistan where he operated. Last August, the man's residence was found, officials said.

The residence is in Abbotabad, Pakistan, an affluent area with lots of retired military. The compound was surrounded by an 8-foot wall with barbed wire. There were extra walls inside and 2 security gates. Also telling was that they burned trash, unlike their neighbors. There was a terrace on the 3rd floor with a 7-foot privacy wall. It was a million-dollar home with no telephone or internet connections, custom built to hide someone of significance. Another major indicator was that a family lived there, one whose size and make up was same as bin Ladens.

By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough that Mr. Obama wanted to "pursue an aggressive course of action," a senior administration official said.

Osama bin Laden is dead:After 10 years of hunting, a team of CIA officers and Navy SEALs kill bin Laden in a firefight near the Pakistani capital

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then quickly buried at sea in a stunning finale to a furtive decade on the run.

Long believed to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a costly, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military academy.

"Justice has been done," President Barack Obama said in a dramatic announcement at the White House while a crowd cheered outside and hundreds more gathered at ground zero in Manhattan to celebrate the news.

Photos: America Reacts to death of Osama bin Laden
Bin Laden hid in plain site in Pakistan
Intel hunt led to shootout at bin Laden fortress
Special report: The death of Osama bin Laden

The military operation took mere minutes.

LANDI KOTAL: Five security officials were killed in a militant attack on a check post in Khyber tribal region’s Landi Kotal area

on Thursday, DawnNews reported.
Militants attacked the check post with heavy weapons as a result of which two security officials were also wounded, security sources told DawnNews.
The wounded officials were shifted to a hospital for treatment.
Security forces subsequently started a search operation in areas surrounding the check post.
Separately, in Khyber’s Bara area, three people were killed in clashes between armed militants from two banned organisations.

Western military alliance NATO says it is keeping a close watch over Iranian naval presence in the Mediterranean, although Tehran has described the naval mission as peaceful and cordial.

Two Iranian warships sailed through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean for the first time since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, after receiving authorization from Egypt. The vessels, Khark and Alvand, have docked at the Syrian coast for training. 

On Wednesday, AFP quoted NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu as saying, "We follow events in the region and we follow these two Iranian warships.” 

"We are monitoring events,” Lungescu added. 

Iran's Navy has made clear that the mission is aimed at strengthening friendly relations with other countries and conveying Tehran's message of peace and security in international waters. 

A serviceman with the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) force has lost his life in a non-combat related incident in the troubled eastern part of Afghanistan.

"A NATO service member died as a result of a non-combat injury in eastern Afghanistan," a Press TV correspondent cited a brief press release by the security mission on Wednesday as saying. 

The alliance did not announce the name or nationality of the victim.

The latest death brings to 47 the number of fatalities among foreign troops in war-ravaged Afghanistan so far this year.

Last year, nonetheless, with a death toll of 711, remains the deadliest year for foreign military casualties. The number eclipsed the previous record of 521 in 2009. 

A Finnish soldier serving with US-led foreign troops has been killed and several others wounded in the volatile northern Afghanistan.

The soldier died in an explosion in the Northern Province of Samangan. 

Finland has around 180 soldiers in Afghanistan.

At least 44 foreign soldiers have been killed in the war-torn country so far in 2011.

Last year was the deadliest for foreign forces in Afghanistan -- with over 711 foreign troops killed.

NATO has admitted to the rising power of the militants in Afghanistan despite the presence of 150,000 US-led forces in the country.

The invasion of Afghanistan took place with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the country. Nine years on, however, Afghanistan remains unstable and civilians continue to pay the price.

The rising death toll among the US-led foreign forces has prompted growing opposition to the Afghan war in countries that have contributed troops to the mission. source

A report says that Washington spends $300 million of American taxpayers' money on Afghan war per day, and this comes as the US has failed so far to establish security in the war-torn country.

This is while the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will allow for a reduced US defense budget in 2012. 

Under the Pentagon's proposed budget, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will drop to $117.8 billion for fiscal year 2012, a reduction of $41.5 billion from the previous year, AFP reported. 

As the US war effort winds down in Iraq, the budget sets aside $10.6 billion for “Operation New Dawn,” with the remaining 50,000 US troops there due to withdraw by the end of 2011. 

Spending for the Afghan mission calls for $107.3 billion, down slightly from the last budget, which requested $113.5 billion. 

The budget released Monday offered no insight into the scale of the planned drawdown, with the Pentagon's budget document assuming an average of 98,250 troops on the ground by the end of 2012. 

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Pentagon had "decided to budget conservatively" as it was too soon to predict how many troops would be withdrawn after July. 

"But that's not to say that we will have 98,000 troops at the end of Feb. 2012. In fact it's a lead pipe cinch we won't," he added. 

The budget for Afghanistan and Iraq includes $79.2 billion for operations, $10.1 billion to counter the threat posed by homemade bombs -- the main killer of NATO-led troops in the war. 

Some $11.9 billion is devoted to repairing and replacing equipment lost or damaged and $12.8 billion for training and arming Afghan security forces, who are supposed to gradually take over security duties between now and 2015. 

By October, the United States and NATO plans to expand the Afghan army to 172,000 soldiers and the police to 134,000 police.

The UK government is spearheading talks with the notorious terrorist group Taliban in Afghanistan, now, into the tenth year after the US-led invasion of the country.

As the US-led occupation of Afghanistan enters its tenth year, casualties have risen among Afghan civilians and NATO troops alike, making the last 12 months the bloodiest of the conflict to date. 

US and British troops are engaged in a dirty war in Afghanistan, using aerial bombing, drone attacks, torture prisons and corporate mercenaries against the Afghan people, all of which are fuelling further insecurity and fostering human rights abuse. 

Britain joined the countries that invaded Afghanistan under the US command after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on US soil on the pretext that the masterminds behind the attacks - al-Qaeda and the Taliban - must be uprooted. 

But, the multinational force led by the US military have neither been able to defeat terrorism nor they succeeded in their attempts to uproot the terrorists the US and British intelligence agencies claimed have taken refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan. 

Fifteen female and two male US veterans have filed a lawsuit against the federal government, accusing the Pentagon of ignoring reports of sexual assault and rape by US military soldiers.

The lawsuit, which names US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld as defendants, has turned the spotlight on 17 sexual assault cases, which the plaintiffs believe military commanders failed to prevent and respond to properly, a Press TV correspondent in Washington reported on Tuesday. 

The plaintiffs filed their class-action suit in the federal court on Tuesday, calling for an objective third party to handle sexual assault complaints, and urging the US military to change the way sexual assault cases are handled. 

In one incident, a female US army sergeant has spoken about her ordeal in the US military in 2002 when she was raped by fellow service members in Korea -- an event that changed her life forever. 

When Washington's red-walled Opera House drew in friends and fellow travellers from the world over to pay tribute last week to veteran American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama set them a challenge.

"He made a difference. Let us now carry that work forward in our time," Mr Obama declared as he ended his eulogy for the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, following his sudden death of a heart attack last month.

But who would fill this larger-than-life figure's big dusty boots?

Names mentioned by several people close to this process are obvious choices on Washington's rollcall of the best and brightest.

But many tried-and-tested troubleshooters are said to be demurring, citing other commitments, advancing age, or the daunting scale of the task.

How will the approaches championed by Mr Holbrooke move forward, including a strong civilian role alongside the growing military juggernaut and its powerful four-star, all-star General David Petraeus?

"The essence of the challenge is getting the balance right between the military and the political, civilian and diplomatic aspects," reflected former deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, a close friend of Mr Holbrooke, who now heads the Brookings Institution.

"That's a 21st Century ass-whooping right there," says a US marine as an airstrike turns a mud compound into dust. That was the offensive against the Taliban in Marjah, in southern Afghanistan, in the spring. The video, filled with a constant chatter of automatic fire, was taken by marines and passed to us.

After a year-long campaign of "ass-whooping", Nato hopes it has "shaped the battlefield" to help achieve its objectives for the next phase of the campaign. The plan is to leave the Taliban weakened enough for the Afghan police and army to start taking over from the international forces. Another aim may be to force the insurgents into talks with the government, though this is not publicly stated by Nato officers.

"Finally, we've aligned our resources with the demands of the campaign," said Nato's top civilian official in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, speaking about the surge of forces ordered by President Obama. "It's still fragile. There's a long campaign ahead but we've regained the initiative having, candidly, lost it in the past."

Recent years have seen the re-emergence of the hardline Islamic Taliban movement as a fighting force in Afghanistan and a major threat to its government.

They are also threatening to destabilise Pakistan, where they control areas in the north-west and are blamed for a wave of suicide bombings and other attacks.

The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994.

It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries - mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia - which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam.

The Taliban's promise - in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power.

A major international conference on Afghanistan has backed President Hamid Karzai's timetable for control of security to be transferred from foreign to Afghan forces by 2014. The BBC's Ian Pannell in Kabul looks at the chances of meeting that goal.

By most estimates the security situation across the country looks increasingly bad.

Violence continues to rise and June was the deadliest month in nearly nine years of war.

According to the UN, the number of roadside bombings rose by nearly 100% in the first quarter of this year compared with 2009.

Assassinations rose by half and suicide attacks doubled. More than 1,000 people died in the first six months of the year, with June being the worst so far for foreign troops.

But military commanders and the politicians who gathered in Kabul on Tuesday think they are on the right track.

Their argument is that the rise in violence is an expected but temporary result of a surge in troops that has deliberately and sometimes aggressively targeted the Taliban in their havens.

Missile attacks by US drones in Pakistan's tribal areas have more than doubled under the Obama administration, research by the BBC Urdu service shows.

Since January 2009 nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of US drones and Islamic militant attacks. The graphics below show how Islamic militant strongholds in the border area close to Afghanistan have been targeted by US drone aircraft, while, at the same time, Islamic militants have carried out attacks across Pakistan.

Missile attacks by US drones in Pakistan's tribal areas have more than doubled under the Obama administration, research by the BBC Urdu service shows.

Compared with 25 drone strikes between January 2008 and January 2009, there were at least 87 such attacks between President Obama taking office on 20 January 2009 and the end of June 2010.

More than 700 people have been killed in such attacks under Mr Obama, compared with slightly fewer than 200 from under his predecessor, George W Bush.

The militant backlash over the same period has been even more violent. Extremists have struck more than 140 times in various Pakistani locations, killing more than 1,700 people and injuring hundreds more, the BBC research shows.

Afghan troop map: US and Nato deployments

The US is the largest contributing nation to the international forces in Afghanistan whose numbers now total, more than 140,000.

The US has around 90,000 troops deployed with the Nato-ledInternational Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan with an additional 10,000 deployed as part of the US Operation Enduring Freedom, mainly in the East regional command.

Afghan blast kills Ex-US Customs man

A roadside bomb blast in southern Afghanistan has claimed the life of a retired US Customs officer and left three other customs workers wounded.

The attack at the Inland Customs Warehouse in the province of Kandahar killed David Hillman, a retired US Customs and Border Protection officer, on Monday.

According to a statement released by US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in Washington, Hillman had worked for the US government for 30 years, AP reported. 

France has decided not to send additional troops to Afghanistan in 2011 as US-led soldiers struggle to rein in the nine-year-old war in the country.

"We have a group of around 4,000 soldiers in the field and we do not intend to increase that," AFP quoted French Defense Minister Alain Juppe as saying during his meeting with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Washington on Tuesday. 

Juppe, however, noted that France will continue to redeploy some of its troops from around Sarobi -- located between Kabul and Jalalabad in Kabul Province -- in order to pave the way for handing over the security missions to Afghan forces. 

USA News Port: Nato In Afghanistan

This US Army In Afghanistan

Afghan Taliban attacks on NATO rise

Taliban small-arms attacks against the US-led troops in Afghanistan have almost doubled in less than a year, Pentagon officials say.

According to the Pentagon officials, at least 18,000 attacks were launched by the Taliban against the US-led forces in 2010 as compared with 10,600 in 2009. 

Army Captain Ryan Donald, a military spokesman in the Afghan capital, Kabul, said the rise is a result of bringing "the fight to them." 

According to Donald, the coalition troops have been on the offensive in an attempt to dislodge the Taliban from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan and in the East along the mountainous border with Pakistan. 

Taliban forces used automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and in some cases, missiles against NATO troops. 

The rise in battles comes as the Obama administration prepares a year-end review of how its strategy is working in war-torn Afghanistan. 

There are about 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan, including a "surge" of 30,000 troops ordered into combat by US President Barack Obama. 

There are about 40,000 troops from allied countries fighting alongside the US and Afghan troops.

Source