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Press TV - Karzai: US forces alienated Afghans Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticized the US strategy in troop deployment, admitting his government's mistake concerning security. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Karzai blamed US operational strategy as a key element in alienating the Afghan tribes with "extrajudicial killings", leading to the fragile security condition in the country. He said the NATO forces should have focused on fighting insurgents in their hideouts in neighboring Pakistan. "For years, I've been saying that the war on terrorism is not in Afghanistan, that it's in the training camps, it's in sanctuaries," Karzai noted, adding that the US officials ignored the warnings. Karzai reiterated that concentrating more troops around the Afghan capital was not a good idea and called for clarification of responsibilities of the ISAF forces and the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai has grown increasingly impatient with th...

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ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » A Call to Action for Women of All Beliefs Lisa Valentine’s arrest on Tuesday is yet another example of the discrimination that Muslim women who wear hijab (headscarves) face on a daily basis. Valentine was told that she could not enter the courthouse in Douglasville, Georgia, unless she removed her hijab, and was jailed for contempt of court when she refused to do so. “I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights,” the AP reported Valentine saying. The ACLU of Georgia has expressed grave concern over policies that deny court access to Muslim women and followers of other faiths who wear religious headgear. Muslim women and girls have been prohibited from wearing their headcoverings in a number of contexts. They have been fired from jobs, thrown off school sports teams, denied access to public places, and otherwise discriminated against because they wear hijab. This isn’t just a Musli...

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Somali fighters destroying shrines Al-Shabab, an armed group fighting transitional government and Ethiopian forces in Somalia, is desecrating religious shrines in the south of the country, Al Jazeera has learned. The ancient graves of clerics and other prominent people are among holy sites being targeted by the armed group in the port city of Kismayo. Al-Shabab took control of Somalia's third-largest city about four months ago and quickly announced it would not tolerate anything it deemed un-Islamic. Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Adow said Kismayo's Roman Catholic church was torn down just days after they seized power through bloody fighting. "The 60-year-old church had not been used for nearly 20 years and not a single Christian lives in the city - but that was not a good enough reason for the militias to spare the building, he said." "They are planning to replace it with a mosque." The fighters then turned their hammers on...

Ethiopia readies to pull troops from Somalia - Yahoo! News ADDIS ABABA (AFP) – Ethiopia said on Saturday it has begun preparations to withdraw troops from Somalia, with the planned pullout raising fears of further chaos in the conflict-torn country. Addis Ababa is to pull its forces out of Somalia, where it deployed in 2006 to back an embattled government, by the end of the year. "This week, Ethiopian troops have begun to make preparations for their withdrawal. This has not, however, prevented continuing clashes with Al-Shabaab forces," a foreign ministry statement said, referring to an Islamist movement that has taken control of much of the country. The Ethiopian withdrawal has sparked fears of a security vacuum in Somalia, where battles have raged between Ethiopian forces and Islamist fighters for the last two years. Under a UN-sponsored agreement signed in Djibouti, the AU mission in Somalia is to take over security responsibilities while joint units involving the governme...