Taliban - Page 50

A spokesman for the Taliban terrorist group in Afghanistan told President Donald Trump in a recent letter it is time for the United States withdraw its troops and leave the war-torn country, noting that peace will be elusive.

Some officials from Pakistan and state sponsor of terrorism Iran have met with Taliban jihadists in the terrorist group’s stronghold of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, reports TOLO News, citing provincial Gov. Hayatullah Hayat.

A discussion about President Barack Obama’s legacy cannot ignore his policies in Afghanistan, where security conditions continue to deteriorate primarily at the hands of the Taliban, Afghans have suffered record casualties, and U.S. military fatalities have dramatically increased under his watch.

On Thursday, the U.S. military published a report on the death of 33 Afghan civilians, and wounding of 27 others, during a joint U.S. and Afghan special forces raid against the Taliban in November.

The Obama administration, with less than two weeks left in power, has announced it is sending some 300 Marines to Afghanistan’s Helmand province to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces struggling to push the group out of the top opium-producing Helmand.

A new video from the Taliban features Canadian Joshua Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped while hiking through Afghanistan in 2012.

Called the “Taliban trick”, Afghan migrants who are scheduled to be deported are claiming to be members of the Taliban forcing police to open criminal investigations preventing their deportation. The German government wants to deport thousands of Afghan nationals because

The top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan along with Afghan officials have expressed concerns about Russian support to Taliban terrorists fighting American-backed troops.

The New York Times makes a strong case that the most important player in Afghanistan’s future is not the United States, but Saudi Arabia, because Saudis are funding both sides of Afghanistan’s endless civil war.

“Sergeant Bergdahl betrayed his fellow soldiers and put the lives of American troops at risk when he walked off his post,” Buchanan, an Air Force veteran, says. “He needs to be held accountable and face a court-martial for desertion. Failure to do so would send a horrible message to all of the soldiers who sacrifice so much in the service of their country.”

Contents: China and Russia in military competition in Tajikistan; Russia promises Tajikistan a ‘large quantity’ of military aircraft

Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Defense, and he is one of the most quotable figures in modern public life.

Irek Hamidullin, a former Russian army officer who defected to fight against U.S. troops in Afghanistan on behalf of jihadists linked to the Taliban, has reportedly argued before a U.S. federal court that the government should treat him as a “lawful combatant” and prisoner of war (POW) who is immune to the civilian court system in the United States.

Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), warned the U.S. military at least twice about a possible suicide assault by a Bagram airbase employee before an unprecedented attack inside the heavily-fortified facility left four Americans dead and 16 others wounded.

The Thanksgiving holiday has reached the thousands of U.S. troops fighting terrorist groups in the Middle East and Afghanistan, ensuring Americans at home enjoy a peaceful day next to their loved ones.

Afghan police have arrested at least 14 Taliban jihadists carrying out terrorist activities disguised as members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and using fake identity cards linked to the troops.

Taliban jihadists have killed two more U.S. Army soldiers this month and two American contractors in an attack that has been described as unprecedented given that it occurred inside the heavily fortified Bagram Airfield in northern Afghanistan, America’s largest military facility in the country.

Following a Taliban suicide-bomb attack on the U.S. military base at Bagram Air Field that killed four people and wounded 16 others, and a truck-bomb attack on the German consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif that killed 7 and wounded over 100, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has announced that it will close temporarily.

Contents: Taliban attack on German consulate in Afghanistan kills six; Afghan Taliban attack on Bagram base kills four Americans; 14-year-old suicide bomber kills dozens in Sufi shrine in Pakistan

Homosexuals in Afghanistan are forced to live in fear and secrecy to avoid being kidnapped, robbed, beaten up, blackmailed, arbitrarily arrested in what police describe as “honey traps,” and murdered by relatives in “honor killings,” reports the Associated Press (AP), citing first-hand accounts by various Afghan gay men.

The Afghan Taliban, in a statement reacting to the election of Republican Donald Trump as U.S. president, declared “victory” over the United States-led coalition in the ongoing war as it urged the imminent American leader to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, reports Khaama Press (KP).

Police in Muslim-majority Pakistan tortured a 9-year-old Christian boy accused of burning the Quran while he and his mother were detained for four days, reveals the London-based charity British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA).

The Sunni Taliban group in Afghanistan still maintains a relationship with the government of its neighbor, Shiite Iran, a state-sponsor of terrorism, the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat has learned from the chief spokesman for the jihadist organization.

Men dressed in uniforms of the U.S.-backed Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have killed more Americans so far this year than the Taliban in what is known as insider or “green on blue” attacks, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. watchdog agency.

An Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch and a faction of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), collaborated in carrying out an attack this week on a police academy in Pakistan that left 63 people dead and another estimated 120 wounded, according to an LeJ spokesman.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, known as the Khorasan province (IS-K/ISIL-KP), is making an effort to establish “their caliphate” on Afghan soil, according to the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces in the country.

The estimated opium poppy plant production and its cultivation area in Afghanistan have increased more than 25-fold over the course of the ongoing war in the country to 4,800 metric tons and 201,000 hectares (ha), respectively, according to the United Nations.

The Obama administration’s Guantánamo parole board has released an al-Qaeda-linked jihadi recruiter from Mauritania and approved for release an Afghan man affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda who “still presents some level of threat.”

The war in Afghanistan is at an “eroding stalemate” after more than 15 years of war, “tipping in the Taliban’s favor,” an unnamed senior administration official told The Washington Post (WaPo).

Sunni Saudi Arabia is reportedly investing nearly $600 million on erecting two higher education institutions in restive areas of Afghanistan.

Nearly 100 members of the corrupt U.S.-funded Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) were executed by the Taliban as they tried to flee a town near the besieged capital of Helmand, a province that has remained an important Taliban stronghold throughout the 15-year-old war and is currently at risk of falling back into the hands of the jihadists, reports Reuters.

The new chief of the Afghan Taliban Haibatullah Akhundzada “openly taught and preached” at the at the Al Haaj mosque in Pakistan for 15 years and left two days after he was named the jihadist group’s new leader in May, Reuters exclusively reports, citing the leader’s associates and students.

A former Guantánamo prisoner released in 2006 after he was extradited to Spain has reportedly been sentenced to 11 1/2 years in prison by Spanish court for leading a recruiting cell for al-Qaeda out of the European country’s capital.

The government of Pakistan has failed to take “adequate” action against the al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked Haqqani Network, which poses the “primary threat” to the American military and its allies fighting in Afghanistan, declared a top U.S. commander.

Over 250,000 Afghans who crossed into neighboring Pakistan illegally have been pressured into returning to their war and corruption-ravaged country along with their compatriots who were admitted into the country legally as refugees.

The Guardian, citing a Pakistani security source, has confirmed that New York and New Jersey bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami spent time receiving “Islamic education” at a Taliban-linked seminary in Pakistan during his extended stay there.