Afghanistan president to overhaul security

Facing an intensified Taliban insurgency, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani plans to fire senior civilian and military leaders in the country's most volatile provinces to reinvigorate the battle against militants, officials have told The Associated Press.
With Afghan security forces suffering high casualties in the run-up to the official Dec 31 end of the US and Nato combat mission, the newly elected president is eager to chart a new course. But the question remains what effect the shake-up will ultimately have in a war-torn country mired in corruption and riven by complex ethnic and tribal rivalries.
 A suicide attack at a funeral in northern Afghanistan killed at least nine people yesterday, officials said.
"Ghani feels there is a need for reform within the armed forces," said Franz-Michael Mellbin, the special representative in Afghanistan for the European Union. "There is an inherent weakness in the way the armed forces have been managing their personnel that didn't allow the best and brightest to step forward."
Ghani plans to replace officials in the northern provinces of Kunduz and Baghdis, Ghazni and Nangahar provinces in the east bordering Pakistan and Helmand in the south, presidential spokesman Nazifullah Salarzai told the AP.