"A suicide bombing at an outdoor dog fighting competition killed 80 people and wounded dozens more Sunday, a governor said. It appeared to be the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
More than 300 people had gathered to watch the event on the western edge of the southern city of Kandahar, including several Afghan militia leaders.
Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said 80 people were been killed. Abdullah Fahim, a Health Ministry spokesman, said 67 had been killed and 90 wounded, though he said the toll could rise.
Kandahar — the Taliban's former stronghold and Afghanistan's second largest city — is one of the country's largest opium poppy producing regions. The province has been the scene of fierce battles between NATO forces — primarily from Canada and the United States — and Taliban fighters over the last two years....
Dog fighting competitions are common around Afghanistan and can attract hundreds of spectators who cram into a tight circle around the spectacle. The sport, banned under the Taliban, is one of few forms of public entertainment in Afghanistan. The matches also invite discreet gambling on the dogs."Also see end of: Afghanistan's Pearl Harbor
".... The picture just above this article that is not on the web.
Caption: "A Bloody, and Ancient, Tradition... Spectators gathered for dogfights in Kabul, Afghanistan, yesterday. The age-old activity was forbidden by the Taliban, but reappeared after the Taliban collapsed. One westerner said the atmosphere at the weekly fights was akin to a football game."
Description: "I'm looking at hundreds of Afghani men gathered around a circle on top of a desert plateau. I see about five or six dogs on a leash with their owners inside the open area. Further in the distance is a scatter-shot parking lot of trucks and small cars. I don't know what to make of this. What I do know is that the people America is annihilating in this world fascinate me. I wish we would stop killing them, no matter how they live or what they do."
So AMERICA brings DOG-FIGHTING BACK to Afghanistan, and we IMPRISON MIKE VICK here?!?!
Only in AmeriKa, readers!
All this after the MSM and Bush tell me how great everything is going there.
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!
"Security worries rise among business owners in Afghan capital"
"With its fortress-like outer walls and posh interior, its sumptuous brunches and postsauna massages, the Kabul Serena Hotel was a symbol of both progress and privilege - a haven for foreign visitors in a harsh, unfamiliar environment and an inaccessible tower for most poor Afghans.
Now, a month after a team of suicide bombers penetrated the Serena, killing seven people, the five-star hotel has become a symbol of something else: the deepening perception of lawlessness and insecurity in and beyond the capital that both Afghans and expatriates say has left them more fearful than at any time since the overthrow of Taliban rule in 2001.
Several restaurants catering to Western aid workers, diplomats, and others have been closed or sold, while those that remain open are mostly empty, nearly all embassies and international agencies having placed their non-Afghan employees under lockdown orders since the Serena attack.
Security barricades and roadblocks have been erected throughout the capital, further shielding government and international compounds, but also angering the public as traffic jams thicken and traditional sidewalk bazaars, where thousands of poor Afghans buy and sell used clothing and inexpensive supplies, are pushed out of the city center....
Afghanistan has been facing a violent rural insurgency by revived Taliban forces for the past two years, but the recent increase in suicide bombings in the capital, coupled with a sharp rise in organized crime and the deteriorating security and political situation next door in Pakistan, has left people in Afghanistan feeling almost as vulnerable as they did during the civil war of the early 1990s...."
Also see:U.S. Wages Chemical Warfare on Afghanistan
The Effects of Depleted Uranium
Memory Hole: Must Read For Women
The Children of Afghanistan
The U.S. Has Already Used Nukes in Iraq and Afghanistan
The Afghanistan You Never Hear About
Black-Out in Afghanistan
Afghanistan Bombings Up 20-Fold Since 2005
Dining By Candlelight in Afghanistan
The Holocausts You Never Hear About
Spinning Murder Positively in Afghanistan
Afghanistan is the New Auschwitz
Readers, are the Taliban on the outskirts of Kabul or something?
"Preying on a weak government and rising public concerns about security, the Taliban are enjoying a military resurgence in Afghanistan and are now staging attacks just outside the capital, according to Western diplomats, private security analysts, and aid workers (Washington Post September 28, 2007 )."
Who are the Taliban, anyway?
"Something of a catchall term for loosely affiliated insurgents without a singular command structure. Often, the Afghan government favors the phrase 'enemies of the state' (New York Times July 24, 2007)?"
