Nafees Takar VOA News March 30, 2024 WASHINGTON — There has been a wave of attacks across Pakistan in recent weeks by militant groups operating in the region that have widely varying objectives. This week, a suicide attacker killed five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver in a convoy in Pakistan’s northwest. Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan,
By VOA Afghan Service March 29, 2024 WASHINGTON — Last week’s concert hall massacre in Russia demonstrates not only the capacity of Islamic State-Khorasan to stage complex attacks beyond its base in South-Central Asia, but also the inability of the Taliban and regional countries to counter its threats, experts say. The Islamic State group claimed the attack
By Sarah Zaman VOA News March 27, 2024 ISLAMABAD — Two and a half years into their reign, the Afghan Taliban have cemented their ultra-conservative rule across the war-torn country but have yet to turn their fighting force into a traditional military. VOA spoke to analysts who say the former insurgent force does not need to pattern
By Navbahor Imamova VOA News March 27, 2024 WASHINGTON — Russian media and analysts are reporting a spike in hate crimes and violence against migrants from Central Asia following last week’s terror attack on a Moscow concert hall, which has led to the arrests of seven people of Tajik origin. Responsibility for the attack, which killed at
By Abubakar Siddique March 26, 2024 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Since its emergence a decade ago, the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) militant group has largely focused its attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan. But IS-K, the Afghanistan branch of Islamic State (IS), has carried out an increasing number of mass-casualty attacks outside its stronghold in South Asia in
Tolo News: Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said that Daesh has targeted opponents of the United States, including the “Taliban,” in recent years. In the article, Maria Zakharova accused the United States of supporting Al-Qaeda and Daesh. “Oddly enough, ISIS has adjusted
Reuters: Sanaullah Ghafari, the 29-year-old leader of the Afghan branch of Islamic State, has overseen its transformation into one of the most fearsome branches of the global Islamist network, capable of operations far from its bases in the borderlands of Afghanistan. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday’s mass shooting at a concert hall near
Ariana: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed that American forces, during their 20 years presence in Afghanistan, were not fighting terrorism, adding they created organizations which later became al-Qaeda. “They created agencies and organisations there, which later became al-Qaeda. Then they began to use it to punish and provoke undesirable regimes in the Middle
Jeff Seldin VOA News March 24, 2024 The United States is assigning responsibility for Friday’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 130 people on the Islamic State terror group’s Afghan affiliate, known as Islamic State-Khorasan, or IS-Khorasan. A State Department official confirmed to VOA that the U.S. gathered intelligence suggesting IS-Khorasan
Michael Hughes: The U.S. exit from Afghanistan was partially based on rolling the dice that the reconstitution of al-Qaeda under the Taliban would be a problem for the neighbors in Central and South Asia, not the Western powers. This was also based on the supposition that should al-Qaeda begin to plot another 9-11-style attack, U.S.