Update for Wednesday, July 1, 2015

[Sorry, I was traveling yesterday and couldn't make a timely post in response to significant events.]

We may never sort out all the details, but Taliban suicide bomb attack on a U.S. convoy in Kabul kills 2 Afghan civilians and injures 24, some critically. (Latest account puts death toll at 10, and by the way puts a human face on some of them.) Two U.S. soldiers are said to have suffered minor injuries in the incident. However, this may have occurred as a result of the Afghan crowd turning on the Americans. According to the New York Times account, a member of the crowd may have stabbed an American soldier. Witnesses dispute whether the Americans only fired warning shots into the air, or shot and injured or killed people who were trying to come to the aid of blast victims. But as Times reporters Joseph Goldstein and Ahmad Shakib write, "The episode hinted at a lingering wellspring of anger against American troops even as the United States’ military presence in Afghanistan is receding."

Meanwhile, a border skirmish leaves 1 Afghan border police commander and 8 Pakistani soldiers dead in Paktika province -- an unfortunate incident as the two countries try to mend relations. (Pakistani sources report this as a "cross-border attack" by the Afghans, while Afghan sources report that the Pakistanis were trying to set up a checkpoint inside Afghanistan.)

And, in news from the narco-state, an Afghan general is accused of smuggling 20 kilograms of heroin, which in case you didn't know is a lot, but a drop in the bucket of the enormous current production in Afghanistan.

Khaama reports a less implausible than usual body count acknowledging the deaths of 10 government troops while claiming 44 militants  killed in the past 24 hours.

Evidently this doesn't constitute a "combat operation," since those have ended, but U.S. forces conducted a night-time raid on the home of an ex-jihadi commander in Parwan province, and destroyed weapons and ammunition. This individual had evidently defected to the government long ago, and "Sami Sameem, a lawmaker from Farah, said the US forces have no right to carry out raids on the houses of jihadi commanders. He said the ex-jihadists were fighting against the Taliban and foreign militants for the past several years. He alleged that the United States authorities in the country were conspiring against the Afghan government." However, other MPs questioned why the man had such a large cache of weapons.

U.S. drone kills 14 alleged militants in Nangarhar.