Ayaz Gul VOA News March 11, 2019 ISLAMABAD — Officials in Afghanistan are rejecting a new American investigative report that claims the founder of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, spent his final years in Afghanistan, not in neighboring Pakistan. Washington and Afghan officials have long asserted that Omar took refuge in Pakistan after a U.S.-led military coalition dislodged
Tolo News: President Ashraf Ghani in a decree on Monday assigned a commission, led by Umer Daudzai, the head of the High Peace Council’s Secretariat, to convene the Consultative Loya Jirga on Peace on April 29. The Jirga, which is a traditional assembly of Afghan delegates from all layers of the society, was initially scheduled for
1TV: “Presence of international troops in Afghanistan could be discussed in peace talks, but the question is when would the issue of Taliban’s ties with Pakistan be discussed?” Ghani said in a ceremony in the presidential palace on International Women’s Day. Click here to read more (external link). Related Ghani: Taliban funding sources and the armed group’s
Ayaz Gul VOA News March 6, 2019 ISLAMABAD — Two influential members of the United States Senate have introduced legislation that would end the nearly two-decade long war in Afghanistan. The move comes at a time when U.S. officials are engaged in direct talks with Taliban insurgents to negotiate a draw-down plan and counterterrorism guarantees. The
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan March 6, 2019 An Afghan official says the death toll of a militant attack on a construction company in eastern Afghanistan has risen to 17. Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, said three militants stormed a construction company near the main airport in the provincial capital,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty March 5, 2019 Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry says the head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar has expressed interest in cooperating with Tashkent in order to push Afghanistan’s peace process forward. A ministry statement issued from Tashkent on March 5 says Afghan Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar also welcomed Uzbekistan’s
Tolo News: The US negotiators and the Taliban members have reached to some kind of agreements on the modality of foreign forces withdrawal from Afghanistan and the guarantee that Afghanistan’s territory is not used as a threat against other countries, Taliban sources familiar with the talks said. But, the Presidential Palace said the final agreement on any
1TV: Cheryl Bernard (wife of Zalmay Khalilzad) said Afghan women need to recognize that the Taliban is not their only or worst problem. Deep-seated cultural values and traditions, such as the so-called Pashtun “honor code,” are far more devastating to women’s lives, and most of these are clearly un-Islamic or even anti-Islamic, she said. Cheryl
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan March 3, 2019 KABUL – A planned meeting of hundreds of Afghan politicians and tribal, ethnic, and religious leaders aimed at discussing negotiations with the Taliban has been postponed, officials say. The gathering, known as a consultative Loya Jirga, was initially set to be held in Kabul from March 17-20.
Michael Hughes: In some of the most advanced countries in the world citizens are continuing to fight – with just cause – for rights such as freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination and freedom from all sorts of state oppression. Yet in certain countries there are virtually no de facto rights. In fact, one could argue that many