25 October 2008 : Gulf Daily News
KABUL: More than 1,000 people shouted anti-Taliban slogans in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, protesting the recent slayings of 26 young men from their community by militants in the south.
The unprecedented demonstration in the Alingar district of the eastern Laghman province was one of the largest anti-Taliban gatherings since the fall of the hard-line regime.
On Sunday, Taliban stopped a bus in southern Kandahar province's Maiwand district and killed 26 of the passengers.
The protests came as France played down the capture by Taliban forces of two French anti-tank missiles seized after the insurgents launched a major attack on hundreds of its troops in Afghanistan.
Defence Minister Herve Morin said in the French City of Annecy that Western forces in Afghanistan sometimes had to abandon weapons in the field and that the main concern had been to get the troops out of last Saturday's ambush alive.
A security official in Pakistan said Taliban militants beheaded two men in Pakistan's troubled tribal belt after accusing them of spying for Afghanistan.
The bodies of the men were found dumped near a road in Azam Warsak, a town in the North Waziristan region.
The US-led coalition said its troops had killed three insurgents and detained four others during a raid in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan.
A new American report, meanwhile, said US and UN experts agrees that Afghanistan will harvest fewer poppy plants bound for the drug trade in 2008 after two years of record crops. lPakistan ex-cricket star turned politician Imran Khan warned against any Iraq-style surge to tackle violent militancy in Afghanistan, saying that the two situations were "completely different". He said that any plan to increase the US military presence would be a bad move.
