US officials should stop debasing themselves by issuing facile calls for peace. The Taliban has no intention of joining a political process and as it has stated numerous times, its goals are the expulsion of US and foreign forces, the overthrow of the Afghan government, the re-establishment of the of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the imposition of its harsh brand of Sharia.
US forces in Afghanistan would be the primary target of Al Khandaq Jihadi operations, while Afghan government and security forces would be secondary, according to the Taliban statement.
The video highlights the worsening security situation in the Afghan north, including Baghlan, where 12 of the province’s 14 districts are contested and one is controlled by the Taliban.
The Taliban currently controls seven of Helmand’s 13 districts and contests the other six, according to date compiled by LWJ.
The closure of the schools highlights the Taliban’s grip on the province, where all of the districts are currently contested.
The district of Khwaja Omari was previously considered to be one of the more secure areas in Ghazni, which is a hotbed for the Taliban and other foreign jihadist groups such as al Qaeda.
Hikmatullah is part of the contingent of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan that defected and joined the Islamic State after the Taliban was caught hiding the death of Mullah Omar.
The designations are the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to pressure Pakistan to tackle terrorist groups that openly operate inside the country with the approval and support of both the military and government.
Resolute Support continues to claim that the Taliban failed in its strategic goals in 2017 and discounts the importance of the Taliban’s rural insurgency.
A US military spokesman also said that the military would be fine if the Taliban was operating on the Pakistani side of the border just as long as Afghanistan was secured.
The helicopter that crashed is used to conduct search and rescue as well as Air Force special operations missions.
The Taliban killed at least 10 Afghan commandos and several other security personnel during an ambush in Farah province last night.
State added Ahmad Iman Ali, the leader of Shabaab’s network in Kenya, and Abdifatah Abubakar Abdi, a dangerous Kenyan commander, to its list of Specially Designated Global terrorists.
The son of Mullah Fazlullah, the emir of the TTP, and two commanders, including the camp’s trainer of suicide bombers, are reported to have been killed.
The Afghan military said it captured a German citizen who was fighting in Helmand province and belonged to the Taliban’s Red Unit, which serves as an elite unit that spearheads attacks on Afghan forces.
Rehan, a commander from the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan who also served as an al Qaeda facilitator, was killed in an airstrike in Bermal district in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Paktika. Bermal is a known jihadist hotspot.
The Taliban videotaped a nighttime assault on an Afghan base in the highly contested district of Khakrez in Kandahar province. The base was overran and the Taliban loitered there into daytime without fear of reprisal for Coalition and Afghan air forces.
The Taliban killed more than 20 soldiers during a nighttime raid on an Afghan military base. Security in Farah has deteriorated over the past several years and Afghan officials now say the provincial capital is again threatened by the Taliban.
The Taliban has consistently stated over the past decade that it does not seek to share power with the Afghan government, and the only peace possible begins with the US abandoning the country.
General Bajwa and Pakistani officials can pontificate all they like about how their country has eliminated terrorism and no longer permit terrorists to use its soil to attack another country. A look at the facts tells another story, and that is one of Pakistani duplicity.
Sajna Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike in North Waziristan, not in Afghanistan like some Pakistani officials have claimed. Sajna lead the group’s powerful Mehsud faction, was close to al Qaeda, and was responsible for murdering thousands of Pakistanis.
Sajna Mehsud, the deputy emir of the Movement of the Taliban in Paksitan and the leader of its powerful Mehsud faction, it reported to have been killed along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. However his death has not been confirmed by the US government or the Taliban.
The camps were used by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other terrorist groups.
The Taliban previously publicized this training facility in a video that was released in July of 2016. Since 2014, the Taliban has disclosed the existence of 17 training camps.
Taliban are parading around with a number of captured Afghan police Ford Ranger pickup trucks. The police trucks were supplied to the Afghan police by the US military.
The district control data shows that the Taliban continues to slowly wrest control of Afghan districts from the government. SIGAR is still not authorized to released key information on district and population control as well as the Afghan security forces.
The estimate has tripled from 20,000 a few years ago. However, one US official somehow remains “hopeful many fighters are not ideological and will eventually lay down their arms,” despite the fact that the Taliban has demonstrated a commitment to the fight for over 16 years.
SIGAR countered with evidence that shows how Resolute Support marked elements of the draft report that it did not want disclosed as “not releasable to the public,” and followed up with the US military on the classifications.
The DoD would not be suppressing information on Taliban district and population control as well as key metrics on the Afghan security forces if the fight was going well.
The designation of Taliban leaders on the Peshawar Shura highlights the continuity of the Taliban-al Qaeda relationship in Afghanistan and Pakistan that has endured more than 16 years of war against the US and its allies.