Taliban - Page 40

The relationship between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the jihadi allies behind the 9/11 attacks on the American homeland, “remains firm” nearly 17 years after the United States declared war on the two terrorist groups in Afghanistan, the United Nations recently reported.

Contents: Afghan army, backed by US, struggles to regain Ghazni after four days; Taliban attack on Ghazni brings America’s Afghanistan strategy into question.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan has become a significant menace against the West despite the fall of the group’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria, a top American commander warned this week.

The unprecedented air campaign against the Taliban’s opium and heroin trade, seen as the group’s primary economic engine and worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the narco-jihadis, has failed to meet to expectations according to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Wednesday.

Three NATO troops were killed after the Taliban carried out a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday near the town of Charakar.

Taliban jihadists may be willing to abandon their long-held precondition that U.S.-NATO forces must completely pull out from Afghanistan before they agree to negotiate an end to the 17-year-old Afghan war, according to a report.

The U.S. is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on agricultural projects in Afghanistan, including irrigation canals linked to opium and heroin production.

The Trump administration is allegedly urging U.S.-backed Afghan forces to pull out of rural areas and focus on urban regions like the troubled capital of Kabul, home to a wave of attacks by the Taliban and its Islamic State rivals in recent months, the New York Times (NYT) reported over the weekend.

A meeting in Qatar last week between a senior U.S. diplomat and representatives of the Taliban reportedly went well last week, gaining an endorsement from the unity government of Afghanistan on Sunday.

An estimated 278 potential jihadi-linked accounts uploaded 1,348 Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) videos on YouTube between March and June this year, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) revealed in a study published shortly after the research period.

The bombshell revelation on Wednesday that the Obama administration funded an al-Qaeda group in Sudan ten years after it was designated a foreign terrorist organization merely scratched the surface of what the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) stands accused of.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the four-star general with responsibility over the Middle East and South Asia, told reporters on Thursday that the administration is reviewing the Afghanistan war strategy, but that no big changes are expected.

The Taliban and its Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) foes have increasingly clashed in Afghanistan during the last week as the United States intensified its efforts to convince Taliban jihadis to bring America’s most protracted war to an end.

Contents: ISIS-K claims credit for killing 15 Taliban, including commander; Fighting between Taliban and ISIS-K escalates in Afghanistan

The U.S.-NATO mission in Afghanistan refuted reports Monday that the top commander of American-led international forces said the United States is ready to engage in direct negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.

The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan is refuting reports that its top commander said the U.S. is ready to engage in direct talks with the Taliban.

The Trump administration has expressed a willingness to engage in direct negotiations with the Taliban to end the nearly 17-year-old Afghan war, marking a significant shift in U.S. policy long sought by the terrorist group, the New York Times (NYT) reported Sunday.

The Taliban and U.S.-backed Afghan National Defense Security Forces (ANDSF) respectively launched offensives in northern Jawzjan and eastern Nangarhar provinces against their mutual enemy the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), killing more than 180 jihadists, the government announced this week.

The U.K. announced this week that it plans to increase its military footprint in war-devastated Afghanistan by 440 troops – to 1,100 – at the behest of U.S. President Donald Trump, Reuters reports.

A Taliban commander, identified as Hanzala, was reportedly killed in an explosion triggered by his own explosives in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that President Donald Trump’s conditions-based strategy to end the nearly 17-year war in Afghanistan is “working,” slowing down the Taliban’s momentum on the battlefield and pressuring the group into realizing “they can’t win on the ground militarily.”

The Obama administration, citing “political concerns” in 2013, derailed a plan to prosecute Taliban drug kingpins in U.S. courts that could have curtailed unprecedented heroin operations in Afghanistan that fueled the deadly opioid crisis across the United States, a Politico investigation found.

Army Cpl. Joseph Maciel from South Gate, California, was killed over the weekend in southern Afghanistan by an Afghan soldier in an apparent “green-on-blue” attack as he was protecting his fellow soldiers. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday while returning from his trip to Asia. At a news conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Pompeo stressed that Kabul must take the lead in peace talks with the Taliban.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan has “grown stronger” over the last few years despite the record number of ongoing U.S.-NATO-led coalition airstrikes launched against the group, the Washington Examiner reported in the last few days, citing the U.S. Department of State (DOS).

Iran is reportedly providing special forces training to the Taliban within its borders and arming the group with Russian-made weapons, the Times learned from Taliban and Afghan officials this week.

A U.S. federal court reportedly sentenced an Afghan national to a mandatory minimum of ten years in prison this week in connection to a multi-million-dollar conspiracy to smuggle heroin used to fund the Taliban’s terrorist activities from Afghanistan into the United States.

The U.S. military has suspended airstrikes targeting the Taliban in Afghanistan while intensifying its air campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) wing in the country, which has already attempted to officially establish a “caliphate” twice this year alone, an American commander told reporters this week.

James talks with Sven Hughes about a number of topics on this week’s episode of Delingpole.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in an op-ed published Wednesday, again supplicated the Taliban terrorists to embrace his U.S.-backed offer of a truce and official acceptance of the group as a political organization, stressing that he is willing to “negotiate” with the Taliban’s chief “anywhere he wants.”

The Afghan Taliban, who have reportedly stepped up attacks against Islamic clerics who disagree with them, on Tuesday denounced the so-called Islamic Scholars’ conferences in Asia and the Middle East as an American “scheme” intended to delegitimize their “jihadic resistance.”

Washington, DC — American taxpayer money has funded irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan mainly benefiting Taliban narco-jihadists, U.S. officials found.

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. lawmakers from both parties, in a rare show of bipartisanship, are expressing support this week for the Trump administration’s efforts towards a peace agreement between Kabul and the Taliban to end the nearly 17-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s administration and the government in charge of the provincial capital of Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace, seem desperate to convince the narco-jihadist group to accept an unconditional ceasefire, offering the terrorist group incentives like the ability to visit relatives this week to embrace a truce proposal of up to one year.

Islamic terrorists carried out at least 177 terror attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this year, killing 841 people and wounding 1,014 others across nearly 25 countries, a Breitbart News tally shows.

Senators on the Armed Services Committee from both sides of the aisle expressed growing impatience and skepticism with the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during a hearing on Tuesday to vet the next incoming commander, Army Lt. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller.