Ayaz Gul VOA News May 3, 2019 ISLAMABAD — An Afghan grand assembly, or loya jirga, ended Friday with the delegates in Kabul demanding peace with the Taliban, as President Ashraf Ghani promised to free 175 Taliban prisoners ahead of Ramadan, which begins in a few days. The Afghan Taliban, for their part, responded harshly to
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty May 2, 2019 Qatar has appointed an ambassador to Afghanistan for the first time, as the Persian Gulf nation hosts peace talks aimed at ending the nearly 18-year Afghan war. Doha, the Qatari capital, hosts the Taliban’s semiofficial political office and has been the location of the ongoing talks between the
Michael Hughes: Many members of Afghan civil society have said they refuse to let the Taliban reverse progressive advances including in the area of women’s rights while the insurgents, who feel they have handed a great foreign invader a military defeat, have their own conditions including making the country’s constitution more Islamic. The warring parties in
Ayaz Gul VOA News May 1, 2019 ISLAMABAD — The United States and the Taliban have begun a new round of negotiations in Doha, Qatar, in a bid to advance peace efforts in Afghanistan and to urge the insurgent group to participate in an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue. U.S. special reconciliation envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, led the U.S.
Ayaz Gul VOA News May 1, 2019 ISLAMABAD — Pakistan says a “terrorist” raid Wednesday from across the Afghanistan border killed at least three soldiers and injured seven others. The military’s media wing said security forces were building a border fence in the remote North Waziristan district when “a group of 60-70 terrorists” from the Afghan
Jeff Seldin VOA News May 1, 2019 WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan is no longer collecting data showing the Afghan government steadily losing ground to the Taliban, telling a U.S. government watchdog the information was “of limited decision-making value.” The so-called district-level stability assessments, which measure the number of the country’s districts under
By Ray Furlong RFE/RL’s Russian Service May 1, 2019 Mohammad Nasser was 10-years-old when he was brought from Afghanistan to the Soviet Union under a special program for orphans. Now he’s fighting a court battle to avoid deportation to a homeland he doesn’t know.