Afghanistan IED’s claim more victims.
Seventeen more Afghanistan civilians were killed to include at least one child. Nine of them were guests at a wedding. So once again Insurgents deliberate attacks have caused innocent deaths that do not get reported with the same effort.
The wedding guests, all members of the same extended family, were killed when their station wagon hit a bomb outside Pul-i-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province north of Kabul, provincial authorities said. Baghlan, along with a wide swath of northern territory, has become far more dangerous over the last year as the Taliban insurgency pushes outward from its traditional strongholds in the south and east.
A spokesman for the provincial government, Mahmood Haqmal, identified the dead as two men, six women and one child.
Family members and neighbors often travel together in overcrowded vehicles, particularly in rural Afghanistan, so a single bomb often has devastating results. A day earlier, in Helmand province in the country’s south, a minivan triggered a roadside bomb, killing six people, and two others were killed by an improvised bomb in neighboring Oruzgan province, officials said.
Also one thing that seems to be claims is a embargo on fuel being made against Iran by some of the local Afghanistan government.
For some Afghans, war’s hardships are overshadowed by more mundane daily privations. A fuel shortage has been spreading — blamed by Afghan officials on a near-blockade imposed by Iran, which borders Afghanistan to the west.
Hundreds of fuel tankers are stranded at the border, with only a fraction of the usual number trickling through.
Afghanistan’s commerce minister, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, said Sunday that the government was trying to obtain fuel from other neighboring countries. Negotiations with Iran to allow tankers through in their usual numbers have so far been unsuccessful, he said.
Afghan officials have cited Iranian suspicions that the fuel is destined for North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force says none of its supplies come by way of Iran.
Category: Terror War
“Hundreds of fuel tankers are stranded at the border, with only a fraction of the usual number trickling through.”
Saw a similar tsituation in Al Walid, except the cargo was eggs. The delay served several purposes:
1)The cargo was not permitted through the POE until a bribe had been paid to the Port Director. The bribe was then diverted to insurgent activities.
2)Competing interests wanted a delay in egg delivery to drive up the price of eggs in Baghdad, thereby making their eggs more valuable. (goal: Iraqi egg sellers made more money while eliminating their competition)
3)The POE director was an insurgent/Baath sympathizer, therefore he wanted to destabilize the government and Baghdad specifically. The delay of delivery resulted in the cost of eggs tripling within 3 days.
Who knows….just my thoughts.
I admit that I’m pretty ignorant of the infrastructure of Iran’s petroleum industry but how can they be exporting fuel when they have to import the refined product just to keep their own needs met? According to the AP (I know, I know…first mistake), when Iran lowered the subsidies on their gas and diesel a few weeks ago, their usage plummeted by 20% almost overnight. That same article indicated that Iran has to import over half of their domestic fuel supplies due to a lack of refining capacity. Something just doesn’t make sense to me here.
With no further information than a simple guess:
It might be like the situation in Alaska. The oil is sold abroad, even though we import oil. The oil is exported because it sells for more than the price we pay for importing oil.
????? I don’t know….guessing.