World | Afghanistan In Cutting Airstrikes, Karzai Could 'Hamstring' Troops Pakistan office bombing kills 5 By Matt Cantor Posted Feb 18, 2013 9:54 AM CST Copied Afghan President Hamid Karzai adjusts his hat as he speaks during a press conference at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Jan. 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid) Afghanistan's president wants his country's security forces to stop asking foreign troops to launch airstrikes in residential areas—and that could leave Hamid Karzai's forces floundering, the Los Angeles Times reports. The commander of US-led forces there maintains that "there are other ways we can support the Afghan forces besides aviation," perhaps via ground artillery systems. But the Times notes that the Afghan security units have no air power of their own with which to fight the Taliban; further, it asserts that the majority of those units are not "capable of operating without coalition support." And some analysts are concerned that agreeing to the plan could be dangerous, particularly with the warmer months coming. "It could provide ground for the insurgency to increase their areas of operations," says a Kabul-based military analyst. Meanwhile, NATO forces today announced that they last week killed a former Afghan soldier who'd turned insurgent and killed an American soldier during a May 11 insider attack, the AP reports. A raid in Kunar province killed the man, known as Mahmood, and an accomplice. Read These Next And ... 23,000 pages of Epstein files are now out. Trump commuted his sentence. Now he's headed back behind bars. The Christmas spirit isn't alive and well everywhere yet. Breaking Bad creator's new show is wowing critics. Report an error