A. Abdullah
1TV: Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s team has urged the election commission and the international community to take step for “saving election and preventing crisis before it is too late.” Abdullah’s team has repeatedly called for removal of 300,000 votes, which it says, are non-biometric and fraudulent. Click here to read more (external link).
Ghani
Tolo News: President Ashraf Ghani ordered the termination of two major mining contracts – for Balkhab copper deposit in Sar-e-Pul province and for a gold deposit in Badakshan — during a High Economic Council meeting last week. The order was confirmed by Abdul Qadir Mutfi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum. Finance Ministry spokesman said contracts were terminated due to a “lack of financial commitment” by contractors. Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News: Afghanistan’s U19 National Cricket Team beat India by two wickets in a low-scoring Youth ODI series on Saturday in India’s Lucknow. India has won the series after beating Afghanistan 3-2 in the series. Click here to read more (external link).
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
November 30, 2019
A high-ranking Taliban official has been killed in clashes with security forces in Jowzjan Province in Afghanistan’s north, a local official said.
Qari Nuriddin and his four bodyguards were killed in the district of Mengajik, where the militant group has a strong presence, provincial government spokesman Abdul Maaruf Azar said on November 30.
Four other militants were wounded in the clashes that erupted overnight, the spokesman told RFE/RL.
There was no immediate comment from the Taliban.
Azar also confirmed local reports that more than 25 members of the Taliban in Mengajik had recently cut ties with the militant group to return to civilian life.
Azar told RFE/RL that all of them were young men from the Mengajik district.
Most of them had left fror Iran and Turkey in search of work, Azar said. He didn’t provide further details.
Ayaz Gul
VOA News
November 30, 2019
ISLAMABAD – Officials in southern Afghanistan say a bomb explosion Saturday killed a senior military commander and wounded at least three other people, including a local journalist.
Separately, an apparent drone attack in the southeast part of the country is said to have killed at least six civilians, including a newborn baby.
The Taliban took responsibility for the roadside bombing in Helmand province, where most of the districts are either controlled or influenced by the insurgent group.
The provincial police spokesman told VOA that Gen. Zahir Gul Muqbil, the commander of an army border unit, was heading to the volatile Marjah district along with a group of journalists to visit an ongoing counterinsurgency operation when the convoy struck a roadside bomb.
Mohammad Zaman Hamdard said the slain general was directing the military operation. He added three security personnel and a reporter with Afghanistan’s mainstream Shamshad TV, were among the wounded. The journalist, Sardar Mohamad Sarwary, is said to have received multiple injuries.
A Taliban statement said the attack also killed Muqbil’s two guards, though insurgent claims are often inflated.
Helmand is Afghanistan’s largest province and a major opium-poppy producing region.
International media watchdogs list Afghanistan as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.
‘Drone Strike Kills Civilians’
Meanwhile, local politicians and officials in southeastern Khost province confirmed Saturday a recent suspected drone strike in their area had killed at least six civilians, including a newborn baby.
A local tribal leader, Gul Marjan Farooqzoi, told VOA’s Afghan service the victims are members of the same family and were traveling back from a hospital in the provincial capital when missiles fired from a pilotless aircraft hit their vehicle and destroyed it. He said two women and two children, including the infant, were among the dead.
Provincial government spokesman Talib Mangal confirmed that a vehicle had come under attack in the area “two days ago” but he shared no further details. Mangal said an investigation into the incident was still underway but he would not say whether the attack was carried out by Afghan forces or their International partners.
Last Sunday, an airstrike in the western Afghan province of Farah killed at least nine civilians and injured several others. The victims were leaving a mosque after offering evening prayers, according to relatives and residents.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) denounced the airstrike in Farah that it noted was reportedly conducted by foreign forces. The commission in its statement urged the warring sides to ensure protection of civilians under their international obligations.
Drone attacks are often carried out by U.S. forces as part of their counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan.
VOA was awaiting a response to its query via email from the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Kabul on whether the alliance had anything to do with the incidents in Khost and Farah.
Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the 18-year-old Afghan war. The United Nations has documented around 2,600 civilian deaths in the first nine months of 2019 while more than 5,600 civilians were injured.
By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
November 29, 2019
KABUL — Thousands of supporters of Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have marched in Kabul in a rally the organizers said was aimed at condemning and preventing electoral fraud.
Large crowds of people, including women, marched from different parts of the capital before gathering in central Pashtunistan Square in front of the Presidential Palace, despite an earlier warning from the city police not to rally near the site.
Abdullah’s Stability and Convergence Team, the organizer of the rally, demands the Independent Election Commission (IEC) annul about 300,000 votes the group deems “fraudulent.”
Protest leaders said they will organize more rallies if their demands are not met.
A statement read at the gathering called for the international community and the IEC to hear the “people’s voice.”
“We will defend their rights,” it added.
Two months after the September 28 presidential election, preliminary results have still not been announced by the IEC. The announcement of the election results has been postponed at least twice, fueling allegations of fraud and more uncertainty in the war-torn country.
A vote recount has been delayed by members of Abdullah’s campaign team who have shut down election centers in several provinces.
The delay marks a further blow to an already delayed tally in a crucial election for the South Asian country as it tries to quell multiple insurgencies, with the help of U.S. and other foreign troops, and recover from decades of conflict.
The election was mired by record-low turnout and bickering between the incumbent, President Ashraf Ghani, and his main election rival, Abdullah.
Donald Trump
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
November 29, 2019
President Donald Trump has said the United States has resumed talks with the Taliban as he made an unannounced Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan — his first to the war-torn country since taking office in 2017.
“The Taliban wants to make a deal and we’re meeting with them,” he told reporters at Bagram Airfield, north of Kabul, on November 28. “We’re saying it has to be a cease-fire and they didn’t want to do a cease-fire and now they do want to do a cease-fire.”
“It’ll probably work out that way,” he said.
Trump’s trip comes a week after the release of two Western hostages from Taliban custody in exchange for three high-ranking Taliban prisoners raised hopes for a revival of peace talks.
The United States and the Taliban had been talking in a bid to put an end to the 18-year Afghan conflict for almost a year before Trump called off the talks in September.
Reuters reported that Taliban officials told the news agency the group had been holding meetings with senior U.S. officials in Doha since last weekend, adding they could soon resume formal peace talks.
“Our stance is still the same. If peace talks start, it will be resumed from the stage where it had stopped,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters on November 28, shortly after Trump said the talks were back on.
Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, welcomed Trump’s statement, telling TASS it was “high time to renew negotiations with members of the Taliban movement and end this drawn-out process.”
In Bagram, Trump acknowledged U.S. troop levels were “substantially” coming down, but insisted that “we’re going to stay until such time as we have a deal or we have total victory, and they want to make a deal very badly.”
There are roughly 13,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as well as European forces participating in the NATO-led Resolute Support mission.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s team last month released a seven-point proposal aimed at building on the U.S.-Taliban talks.
However, observers have questioned whether certain proposals in the plan — including a call for a monthlong Taliban cease-fire before talks resume — are feasible.
Also, the Taliban has so far refused to talk to the Afghan government, which it says is a U.S. puppet.
Trump was greeted by U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, upon his arrival at Bagram.
Trump, who was accompanied by U.S. national-security adviser Robert O’Brien, met with Ghani, who officials said was given only a few hours’ notice of the visit.
The Afghan leader thanked Trump for pressing for “the type of peace that will ensure the gains of the past year and ensure your security and our security.”
Later, Ghani wrote on Twitter that in “our bilateral meeting, we discussed the important progress we have jointly made in our military efforts in the battlefield, including crushing [Islamic State] in eastern Afghanistan. President Trump appreciated the tireless efforts of the Afghan security forces in this fight.”
“Both sides underscored that if the Taliban are sincere in their commitment to reaching a peace deal, they must accept a cease-fire. We also emphasized that for any peace to last, terrorist safe havens outside Afghanistan must be dismantled,” Ghani wrote.
During his visit to the base, Trump also served turkey to some U.S. troops and sat down to eat Thanksgiving dinner with them.
With reporting by Reuters, AFP and TASS
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