Leader of attack on Kabul Hotel killed by aircraft of the NATO - The Guardian

A military helicopter of the NATO plane on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, after he was attacked by fighters Taliban photography: S Sabawoon/EPA

The NATO planes killed one insurgent linked to a deadly attack hotel in the Afghan capital, this week, the coalition said a raid raises questions about whether if Afghan forces are prepared for the impending transition of security.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Intercontinental, one of two major hotels used by foreigners and representatives of the Afghan Government, a rare nighttime raid which began Tuesday and ended five hours later with 12 killed.

However, the International Security Assistance Force led by NATO (ISAF) said that the al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network had also participated in the assault by nine suicide bombers and gunmen.

ISAF has identified the leader of the Haqqani network, killed in an air attack: Jan Ismail, described as a Deputy to the senior Commander Haqqani in Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan.

He said Thursday he and "several Haqqani fighters" were killed in an air attack in the province of Paktia Gardez district South of Kabul on Wednesday.

"The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban secret agents, was responsible for the attack on Tuesday night at the Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge," ISAF said in a statement.

The raid came only a week after the President of United States, Barack Obama, announced the progressive withdrawal of combat troops, with 10 000 to leave at the end of this year and 23 000 more at the end of September 2012.

Announcement of the Obama prior to the beginning of a gradual transition of responsibility to the Afghan forces next month that will end with all foreign combat troops, leaving the Afghanistan at the end of 2014.

This process to begin in seven fields next month, the raid on the hotel raised serious questions about whether the Afghan forces, including the police, were ready to support.

"It shows one of the concerns is that the Afghan security forces is more in quantity, not quality," said Thomas Ruttig, Co-Director of the network based in Kabul to Afghanistan analysts.

The attack ended when a helicopter of the NATO sniper killed the last three attackers fighting from the roof of the hotel. Earlier television images showed the Afghan forces firing heavily in the air.

ISAF training of members of the Afghan national police of 126,000 - strong since 2009.

Afghan police, who will be the front line of security transition in towns and villages across the Afghanistan, have long been considered inept and behind the formation of the dindisie army, which was the subject of the efforts of training since the Taliban was overthrown late 2001.

Violence has increased to record levels in Afghanistan over the past 18 months as NATO troops, especially, American forces struck against a growing insurgency, especially in the heart of the Taliban in the South.

A quarterly report by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Security Council on the Afghanistan concluded that the number of incidents of security since March had increased 51% over the same period in 2010, with suicide bombings rises sharply.

Attacks in the heart of the Taliban in Kandahar have been particular concern. "The city of Kandahar and its environs recording the majority of incidents during the reporting period, with a quarter of global attacks" and more than half of all registered killings countrywide, the report said.

But, Ruttig, stated that also developed attack revealed that the other difficulties encountered in Afghanistan before the start of the transition process, which also includes the delivery to Afghans the functioning of civil institutions and projects.

Is policy paralysis prevailing in the country for months.

"The fact that NATO and the Afghan people were able to avoid that it says something - which must be something more than just the security of the transition," Ruttig said the hotel attack.

"Security forces are only part of the transition." It must also be a strengthening of political institutions and, at the moment, the parliamentary crisis has brought political to a standstill, "he told Reuters."

Last week a Court of special election created by a decree by President Hamid Karzai, cancelled the results of a quarter of parliamentary seats since the elections of last year, effectively throwing 62 MPs who had been declared winners.

The move and the Court itself, were tagged unconstitutional and illegal by observers and Afghan officials to the West. Critics have said that the Court has been put in place by Karzai to pursue its own political opposition of the order of the day and silence.