Ayaz Gul VOA News October 2, 2018 ISLAMABAD — A suicide bomb blast has ripped through an election-related gathering in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 13 people and wounding 30 others. The deadly blast in Kama district in Nangarhar province went off inside the campaign office of a candidate for the October 20 parliamentary elections. The
Michael Hughes: Afghan CEO and co-leader Abdullah Abdullah put forth the dubious proposition that the Trump administration’s South Asia strategy is working because without it the situation would be much worse. In the first place, Abdullah cites an unprovable counterfactual that can be employed to support any claim regardless of empirical results. Moreover, there is plenty
Tolo News: In reaction to the possibility of privatizing the Afghan war, President Ashraf Ghani said he will not allow “foreign mercenaries” to operate in Afghanistan. President Ghani says Afghan forces have enough potential and have managed to save the country from “collapse”. Ghani’s remarks come days after Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater security company, in an
Ariana: In an interview with a foreign news channel, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has clarified Islamabad’s policy regarding Afghanistan. In response to the claims that some of Pakistani army and intelligence ISI were playing a double game, helping Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, the foreign minister said, “They were helping their own country (and
Ayaz Gul VOA News September 29, 2018 ISLAMABAD — The Taliban have denounced Afghanistan and Pakistan for planning to convene a major bilateral conference of religious scholars in a bid to declare the Afghan insurgency as un-Islamic. An Afghan delegation composed of officials and clerics is visiting Islamabad and holding talks with Pakistani counterparts to prepare
Press TV September 28, 2018 Representative from the Taliban have held a meeting with Afghan government officials in Saudi Arabia after earlier plans for another meeting with American officials broke down. “Our agreement for holding the meeting was only to discuss prisoner exchange and the removal of our people from the UN black list so
Eisa Khan Ayoobi via Al Jazeera: The NUG is struggling with containing the Taliban and addressing internal divisions – [Ghani’s] intra-Pashtun clan politics seems to have made reaching out to the Taliban more difficult. The Taliban leadership are Durrani Pashtun from Kandahar who take pride in being the descendants of “conventional” Afghan rulers like Ahmad Shah Durrani.
Tolo News: The US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Monday that the US military is adjusting tactics in Afghanistan as the Taliban continue to inflict heavy casualties on local forces. “So far, they have taken hard casualties over the last year,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon as quoted in a report by AFP. “But they
Tolo News: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hizb-e-Islami, on Monday said during a meeting visit with Nangarhar residents that Taliban and Daesh are the same – and only their flags differ. “Talib and Daesh are the same, only their flags and names have changed. They were friends of one stronghold and they have shared aims and similar
Tolo News: Mahfoz Safi, the provincial council’s deputy chief, said the incident occurred on Sunday night in the Badrab village during a foreign forces operation against Taliban and as a result civilians were killed. According to Safi, children and women were also among the victims and three others were wounded in the incident. Safi said that all