Ga. National Guard going to Afghanistan

The Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade, which returned from Iraq last year, is heading back to war. This time, the state's citizen soldiers will be deployed to Afghanistan.

The Department of Defense announced Monday that the 48th brigade has been tapped to help train Afghan security forces. The brigade's 4,200 soldiers will be called up in the spring of 2009 and head overseas two months later.

Brigade commander Col. Lee Durham said his soldiers will be based throughout Afghanistan training local Army and police forces. He said the mission will not be that different from the role it played in the second half of its deployment in Iraq when Georgia soldiers provided combat security and worked closely with Iraqi soldiers.

Durham, who took command of the brigade in October, said he was excited about the impending deployment.

"I have a lot of confidence in them," he said.

Durham said most Guard units have been put on a one-year on, three years off rotation. The 48th returned from Iraq in May 2006 and will have been home for almost three years when it is mobilized again.

Osama call will not affect war on terror’

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* Afghan official says ‘security in the country international responsibility’

KABUL: Afghanistan Friday dismissed a call attributed to Osama bin Laden for Europe to break ranks with the United States and leave this nation, saying it would not harm international unity in the “war on terror.”

The call was made in an audiotape attributed to the world’s most wanted man and aired on Al-Jazeera television on Thursday. “Security in Afghanistan means security in Europe and is an international responsibility,” Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Baheen told AFP.

International responsibility: “We think this is an international responsibility for Afghanistan and their own countries.

Nothing will deter the international unity on the war on terror,” he said. A voice purported to be that of the Al Qaeda chief said in a “message to the European peoples” that the United States “insisted on invading” Afghanistan even though it knew that Afghans were not behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. “I affirm that the Afghans - government and people - had no knowledge whatsoever of these events and America knows that,” he said.

A US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks because the then Taliban government did not hand over Al Qaeda leaders for the atrocities purportedly committed by them. It has been joined by a NATO-led force that now numbers about 41,000 soldiers from 38 nations.

Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, bin Laden has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through warnings issued on video and audio cassettes. afp