Assassination attempt rattles Afghan official

Gates says no to timeline for pullout

A damaged vehicle is seen at the site of a blast in Herat, Afghanistan on Sunday.
A damaged vehicle is seen at the site of a blast in Herat, Afghanistan on Sunday.

— A powerful member of President Hamid Karzai's Cabinet threatened to quit after a suicide car bomb attack targeted him Sunday, killing five people, in the latest Taliban attempt to destabilize Afghanistan's struggling government.

Two Americans were among six NATO troop deaths elsewhere.

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is pushing back against calls for withdrawal timelines from Afghanistan, saying it'sa mistake to set a deadline to end U.S. military action and a defeat would be disastrous for the U.S.

Shortly after the bombing in the western city of Herat, Energy Minister Ismail Khan railed against the dramatic rise in violence in Afghanistan, saying that thousands of new refugees are seeking shelter in Herat because of militant attacks in outlying districts. Five civilians died in the failed assassination attempt, police said.

Two days ago, Khan said, a young man was hanged by militants only a couple of miles outside a NATO base and Afghan government center. Kidnappings of wealthy family members are on the rise, including the abductions of girls, he said.

Khan said government security agents had warned him that insurgents planned to target him. Two earlier assassination attempts had been foiled, he said.

"Very clearly I want to say that if the government does not form a clear strategy to bring peace and security, and the situation continues like this, I will not participate in the Cabinet anymore," Khan said.

Taliban assassination attempts against Afghan officials have intensified this year, with more than 100 officials and pro-government tribal elders attacked - half of them fatally. Echoing a strategy of insurgents in Iraq, the targeted violence undermines the weak government and drives educated and competent Afghans away from official posts.

The convoy carrying Khan, a power broker in Herat and former governor of that western province, was headed to the airport when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a high school, said Raouf Ahmadi, a police spokesman. Khan said five civilians died and 17 people were wounded, including four of Khan's bodyguards.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility and said the target was Khan.

DETERIORATING SECURITY

The Taliban assassination campaign is a strong sign of deteriorating security in the country, where a record number of U.S. and NATO troops also have died this year. The Obama administration is now debating whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan as its government faces allegations of widespread fraud from the disputed Aug. 20 presidential election.

Gates issued a stern warning to critics of a continued troop presence in Afghanistan Sunday, saying the Islamic extremist Taliban and al-Qaida would perceive an early pullout as a victory, similar to the Soviet Union's humiliating withdrawal in 1989 after a 10-year war.

"The notion of timelines and exit strategies and so on, frankly, I think would all be a strategic mistake. The reality is, failure in Afghanistan would be a huge setback for the United States," Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN's State of the Union.

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"Taliban and al-Qaida, as far as they're concerned, defeated one superpower. For them to be seen to defeat a second, I think, would have catastrophic consequences in terms of energizing the extremist movement, al-Qaida recruitment, operations, fundraising, and so on. I think it would be a huge setback for the United States," Gates said.

The top NATO commander, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has said a different strategy on the ground as well as more troops are needed in Afghanistan. In a 60 Minutes profile that aired Sunday night, the commander argued for faster progress.

"We could do good things in Afghanistan for the next 100 years and fail," he said. "Because we're doing a lot of good things and it just doesn't add up to success. And we've got to think quicker."

Two top Republican senators also urged Obama on Sunday to send additional troops to Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban and al-Qaida from gaining the upper hand there.

"I'm very hopeful that the president will make the right decision, which is to commit the necessary troops," Sen. John McCain, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said Sunday on ABC's This Week. "A half-measure does not do justice. And time is important, because there's 68,000 Americans already there and casualties will go up."

Another member of the committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said the U.S. risks losing the fight without sufficient forces in place.

"We will be driven out. The Taliban will come back stronger than they were before. The moderates in Afghanistan will go back in hiding or get killed. NATO will be seen as a failure," he said on CBS's Face the Nation.

BALLOT RECOUNT

Many Americans are skeptical of sending more troops to support a government in the midst of recounting votes from a tainted presidential election. Karzai currently has about 54 percent of the vote. If enough questionable ballots get thrown out he could drop below the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

Karzai's main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, said Sunday that he was satisfied so far with the recount, which is using a sampling of votes to speed the process and meet a narrowing time frame to hold a possible runoff before snows block much of the country.

"We will follow up that process step by step till, God willing, a government acceptable to you comes to power," he told a crowd in Kabul.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other NATO foreign ministers, meeting Friday in New York with their Afghan counterpart, reached "consensus" that Karzai would probably "continue to be president," whether through a runoff or as the legitimate winner of the disputed elections, an Obama administration official said.

What Karzai has called "reconciliation" with insurgents who agree to lay down their arms is emerging as a major factor in administration deliberations about a way forward in Afghanistan, officials said. Along with plans to increase the size of the Afghan security forces, the U.S. military is developing programs to offer monetary and other inducements to insurgents it thinks are only loosely tied to the Taliban and other militants.

Gates said Sunday that Obama has made no decision yet on whether to send additional troops.

Two U.S. service members died Saturday in the country's south - one from a roadside bomb explosion and the other from an insurgent attack, the NATO-led force said Sunday. A British soldier died Sunday from a bomb explosion while patrolling in southern Afghanistan, Britain's Defense Ministry said.

Elsewhere, three French soldiers died in a violent storm in northeastern Afghanistan late Saturday. One soldier was struck by lightning, while two were swept away by a rain swollen river during an operation in Kapisa province, said military spokesman Christophe Prazuck.

This year has been the deadliest of the eight-year war for U.S. and NATO troops. The six latest deaths bring to 64 the number of NATO troops killed this month.

An airstrike Saturday by international forces in Wardak province, bordering Kabul, killed three Afghan civilians, said Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Information for this article was contributed by Rahim Faiez and Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press; by Daniel Whitten of Bloomberg News; and by Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1, 4 on 09/28/2009

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