Free Republic

Officials say an explosion has killed Afghanistan's deputy chief of intelligence. Sayed Ahmad Safi, the spokesman for the governor of Laghman province, says Dr. Abdullah Laghmani died in the blast. Laghmani is the No. 2 at Afghanistan's intelligence service, known as the National Directorate for Security. A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, tells The Associated Press that a suicide bomber had targeted Laghmani. The blast occurred during the inauguration of a new mosque in the city of Mehterlam in Laghman — 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Kabul.

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...