The plan called for the current Afghan constitution to serve as the framework for a future constitution, elections, and power sharing, all of which have been flatly rejected by the Taliban in the past.
Nearly forty percent of the police checkpoints across Afghanistan have been shut down. The Afghan Army abandoned a military base in Badghis, giving the Taliban full control of a district.
The Taliban called for the return of its Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as it denounced the Afghan government as a “corrupt and illegitimate regime.”
The Taliban cannot be trusted to live up to any agreement when it won’t admit that Al Qaeda remains in Afghanistan, under its protection
Falih al-Fayyadh, the Chairman of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces and the former National Security Advisor to the Iraq’s Prime Minister, was identified as a member of an “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Force Qods Force supported crisis cell” that supported attacks on protesters in 2019.
Afghan security forces continue to target Al Qaeda as the Taliban promises that it won’t allow allow foreign fighters to attack the West, even though the Taliban claims Al Qaeda doesn’t exist inside Afghanistan.
Despite the repeated targeting, killing, and capturing of Al Qaeda leaders and operatives, the Taliban maintains that the terror group does not operate in Afghanistan.
Mohammad Hanif was involved in the 2002 assassination attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and the suicide attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that same year. He was killed in Farah province. But the Taliban somehow continues to maintain that Al Qaeda isn’t in Afghanistan.
The Taliban continues to press its offensive nationwide. Over the past 48 hours, the Taliban has launched strikes in 24 of the country’s 36 provinces.
Takhar province’s deputy chief of police is among 47 security personnel killed overnight in the restive northern province. Taliban attacks persist throughout the country.
U.S. officials continue to maintain that the Taliban committed to a “reduction in violence” as part of the withdrawal agreement. The deal says no such thing, and the Taliban continues to mount attacks.
In Logar province, a large Taliban convoy that carried the Taliban’s shadow governor paraded through a town unopposed by Afghan and Coalition forces.
The U.S. government, military, and intelligence services have provided inaccurate assessments of Al Qaeda’s strength in Afghanistan for more than a decade. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued that tradition by recent regurgitating that Al Qaeda has fewer than 200 fighters in the country. This estimate, like previous ones, should not be trusted.
American politicians, military leaders, and reporters have been claiming that the Taliban is “tired,” “desperate,” “war weary” and other such statements for the past decade and a half. Yet the Taliban keeps fighting.
The Taliban’s demand of the release of the wife of slain Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent leader Asim Umar is curious, as the group maintains that Al Qaeda does not have a presence in Afghanistan.
Anas Haqqani’s paean to his father is further evidence that he holds an important position in the Taliban.
The U.S.-Taliban withdrawal deal legitimized the Taliban’s refusal to recognize the Afghan government – and more ammo to continue walking the hard line it has drawn in refusing to engage directly in talks with the government.
The Taliban is displaying its military might as Afghan government has agreed to release the final batch of 400 prisoners demanded by the Taliban.
The Taliban has been very clear that it will not compromise on its objective of resurrection of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, and will continue to wage jihad until its objective is realized. Yet U.S., NATO, and Afghan leaders continue to view intra-Afghan talks in which the Afghan government cannot attend as the solution.
The Taliban previously stated that the Abu Ubaidah Ibn Jarrah Training Center was located in Badakhshan province. Members of the Turkistan Islamic Party have trained at a Taliban camp in the province.
The Taliban continues to use the signature terror tactic of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups despite signing a deal with the U.S. that facilitates the withdrawal of American troops from the country.
Muft Noor Wali Mehsud’s Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, which remains allied with Al Qaeda, has stepped up small scale operations against Pakistani security forces in both North and South Waziristan over the past several months.
The attack belies U.S. officials’ claims that the Taliban has not been fighting in Afghanistan’s cities.
This time, the Taliban denied a Department of Defense report that Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent cooperates with the Taliban by claiming AQIS isn’t inside the country.
Pakistan remains a “safe haven” for a host of regional terror groups, including the Afghan Taliban and its integral subgroup, the Al Qaeda linked Haqqani Network, according the the State Department’s newly released Country Reports on Terrorism 2019.
The Taliban’s denial of Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan means that one of the two groups are not telling the truth. Either Al Qaeda has crafted an elaborate scheme to pretend it fights in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban, or the Taliban is lying, and Al Qaeda has fought there for decades and remains to this day.
Over the past week, the Taliban has killed or wounded more than 420 Afghan security personnel during attacks across Afghanistan. This buries claims by Afghan officials who claimed the Taliban agreed to extend its Ei-ul-Fitr ceasefire.
the Taliban continues to make it clear that it won’t accept anything less than a return of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In a recent video, it extols the virtues of jihad while it denounces “deviants … who who are trained in the poisonous deviant beliefs of atheism, communism, secularism, democracy, and other satanic western and disbelieving ideologies.”
The Taliban’s statement should raise deep concerns with U.S. officials about the group’s reliability to be an effective counterterrorism partner against Al Qaeda and other terror groups.
Pakistan continues to play its double game by supporting terror groups. Thousands of Pakistanis, including fighters from the Pakistan state-sponsored Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as well as the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, continue to support the Taliban’s jihad against the Afghan government.