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Afghan Government Moves Forward, Top Taliban Commander Wounded
KABUL, Dec 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As the new Afghan government met Wednesday for the second time in four days since its inception here on Saturday, a report by the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said that senior member of Afghanistan's deposed Taliban regime was "seriously wounded" during a raid by U.S. warplanes last month.
Jalauddin Haqqani was reportedly wounded during an air strike in Afghanistan's eastern city of Khost on November 16 and "may even have died from his injuries," AIP said, quoting sources from the Pakistani-border town of Meran Shah.
Haqqani, a renowned Afghan commander during the resistance war against the Soviet occupation from 1979-1989, was a senior commander and the minister of frontier affairs under the Taliban.
The sources said a large number of people were killed in U.S. raids in Khost and elsewhere in Paktia province, including many of Haqqani's relatives, the Pakistan-based news agency reported.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's four-day-old post-Taliban cabinet convened Wednesday as its leader, Hamid Karzai, urgently tackled his twin tasks of establishing unity and security in the war-shattered nation.
"There is a sense of immediacy in the new cabinet," said Faizullah Jalala, the number two at the education ministry, where hundreds of students were trying to register for study now that the hardline Taliban are gone.
"They don't have much time, so they want to see results," he said, as ministries settled down to the difficult task of trying to rebuild a nation battered by bloodshed, drought and hunger.
A traditional Afghan meeting of tribal elders, or loya jirga, will convene to map out the future of the nation in half a year, at the end of Karzai's mandate.
Karzai, who, like many in his cabinet, returned from exile after Afghan forces backed by punishing U.S. air raids toppled the Taliban, faces the daunting task of uniting the nation's many ethnic and tribal groups.
Analysts say he was shrewd to bring into the government Abdul Rashid Dostam, an ethnic Uzbek warlord whose solid grip over the north gave force to his complaints about the distribution of power in the new administration.
Dostam, a controversial figure due to accusations of numerous human rights atrocities committed against civilians by forces under his command, was named deputy defense minister as the interim government laid out plans for a new national army, one of many moves Karzai, himself an ethnic Pashtun, has made since his inauguration Saturday.
Jalala said Karzai on Wednesday was continuing extensive talks with Ismail Khan, the former governor of Herat province and another regional strongman and potential rival whose support could be crucial to the government's success.
While Karzai tries for a delicate balance between competing interests, a British-led international peacekeeping force that will put a brake on any slide into post-war factional strife has been delayed.
Nations were to gather in London beginning Thursday to thrash out the final details of the force and the number of troops each country would send.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 troops are expected, but the specifics of its role in the new Afghanistan are less than clear. British officials have acknowledged that enlargement of their contribution, from several hundred already here to as many as 1,500, will not be completed by the end of the year.
Karzai has vowed to rid the nation of "terrorism" and has said U.S. troops, who are still combing the country in search of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters, can remain for now.
But whether bin Laden was buried in the rubble of the U.S. bombing campaign or is hiding in the rugged caves of eastern Afghanistan, or has fled to neighboring Pakistan, remains a mystery. Bin Laden, accused by the U.S. of masterminding the deadly September 11 attacks in the on New York and Washington which killed around 3,000 people, has vanished along with the supreme leader of the Taliban who sheltered him, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The Pentagon says there are still pockets of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters dotted across the country, despite an estimated 2,000 reported to have fled toward neighboring Pakistan.
Afghan security forces arrested an al-Qaeda fighter in the southern city of Kandahar, once the Taliban's stronghold, but seven others barricaded themselves in a hospital with weapons and explosives, a local spokesman said.
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