Ayaz Gul VOA News May 1, 2017 ISLAMABAD — The Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan has continued to inflict “shockingly high” casualties on government forces and brought more territory under its control or influence, a U.S. government agency said Monday. The quarterly assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR follows the April 19
Michael Hughes: The visit by a 15-member delegation of senior Pakistani lawmakers to Kabul was supposedly designed to assure Afghan leaders that Islamabad was committed to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. However, at the same time, in a meeting on April 30, the head of the delegation called on Afghanistan’s head of
Press TV / April 30, 2017 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the US-led military alliance is considering boosting its troop strength in war-ravaged Afghanistan. The NATO chief told Welt am Sonntag, a German newspaper, on Sunday that the 28-nation alliance is expected to make a decision by June on a possible troop increase in the
VOA News / April 29, 2017 So-called Islamic State has wreaked havoc in eastern Afghanistan since 2015, mostly through its loose affiliates — attacking government installations and villages, killing and abducting hundreds of people, and keeping schools shuttered and replacing them with IS religious seminaries. It also claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks in the
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty April 29, 2017 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one Afghanistan’s most notorious warlords, has called on the Taliban to stop fighting government troops and begin peace talks. “I invite you to join the peace caravan and stop the pointless, meaningless and unholy war,” Hekmatyar, a former prime minister, told a gathering of Afghan politicians
VOA News / April 28, 2017 The emir of the Islamic State terror group in Afghanistan is likely dead, targeted in a U.S.-Afghan raid on a cave-and-tunnel complex that left two U.S. special operations forces soldiers dead. Pentagon officials said Friday that they suspected IS Khorasan province leader Abdul Hasib was killed in a brutal,
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan April 28, 2017 Notorious former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has held talks with government representatives in eastern Afghanistan after years outside the country, his first public meetings with officials from the Western-backed government since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The meetings on April 28 came after Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami militant group
Ayaz Gul VOA News April 28, 2017 ISLAMABAD — The Taliban has unleashed its annual so-called “spring offensive” in Afghanistan, saying it will mainly target U.S.-led foreign “occupation” troops to force them to quit the country. In a formal announcement released Friday, the Islamist insurgency claimed “Operation Mansouri” went into action early Friday morning across all
CNN: Two US service members were killed Thursday while conducting a joint US-Afghan operation in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province, Pentagon Spokesman US Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told CNN. The operation was targeting ISIS-K, the terror group’s Afghanistan affiliate. A US official told CNN the service members were Special Operations Forces soldiers. Click here to
Ayaz Gul VOA News April 26, 2017 ISLAMABAD — A central leader and ex-spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, has alleged Afghan security forces and their intelligence agency, NDS, together with the Indian spy agency are supporting cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistan. The militant leader in a video confessional statement released by the Pakistan Army,