http://www.smh.com.au/world/attacks-aim-to-wind-back-afghan-gains-20120714-222px.html
Attacks aim to wind back Afghan gains Date July 15, 2012 Laura King, Kabul Keen to negotiate: Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Photo: Reuters FUELLING fears over the dangers faced by Afghan women, a bomb attached to the car belonging to a provincial women’s affairs chief has killed her and seriously injured her husband. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assassination of Hanifa Safi, who headed the department of women’s affairs in Laghman province, east of Kabul. But a spokesman for the provincial government, Sarhadi Zewak, blamed ‘‘enemies of the people’’ — the term Afghan officials customarily use to describe the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Friday’s killing comes against a backdrop of high-profile attacks against women in recent months, including the public execution of a woman in a province only an hour’s drive from Kabul, which was captured on video. With the Western combat role in Afghanistan set to end in 2014, many women are worried about a sharp erosion of gains made in the 11 years since the toppling of the Taliban movement. Many women fear the government of President Hamid Karzai, which desperately wants to reach a political settlement with the Taliban, would be willing to trade away their hard-won freedoms in order to come to an accord with the fundamentalist Islamist movement. LA TIMES • An influential MP was among more than 20 killed in a suicide attack at a wedding in the north of Afghanistan yesterday. Ahmad Khan Samangani, an ethnic Uzbek MP, was attending the wedding of his daughter in the province of Samangan. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/attacks-aim-to-wind-back-afghan-gains-20120714-222px.html#ixzz20i43nYJD [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
