The “Training Camp Shaheed Ustaz Aasim in the Lions Den” is said to be in the Zurmat district in the eastern Afghan province. The district is a known bastion of the Haqqani Network and has hosted al Qaeda fighters in the past.
On August 1, Ahrar al Sham released a statement honoring Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s first leader. The statement is further evidence that Ahrar al Sham is an extremist organization.
The influential veteran jihadist leader has endorsed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as the new emir of the Taliban, and urged others to pledge to him, according to the Taliban.
Reports surfaced that veteran jihadist leader Jalaluddin Haqqani died in 2014, but the Afghan Taliban have gone on the record stating that the patriarch of the Haqqani Network is alive.
The Taliban’s new emir is Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. His top two deputies are Moulavi Haibatullah Akhunzada and Siraj Haqqani. Both Mansour and Haqqani are allied with al Qaeda.
The Taliban’s spokesman has confirmed that Mullah Omar, the so-called “Emir of the Faithful,” is dead.
Malik Ishaq has been in and out of Pakistani custody over the years, despite the fact that he was the head of one of the most violent jihadist groups in Pakistan and directed numerous terror attacks.
The district of Kohistanat in once-peaceful Sar-i-Pul is the latest to fall to the Taliban. Kohistanat is a known gathering place for Arab, Uzbek, and Pakistani jihadists.
The Taliban have remained on the offensive in Badakhshan province, where Afghan security forces are struggling to maintain security.
The al Qaeda and Taliban-linked jihadist group has operated under the radar of Western officials in Afghanistan, but continues to wage jihad alongside its allies.
Abu Khalil al Sudani worked with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri for years. He was a member of al Qaeda’s shura council and directed suicide operations. Osama bin Laden’s files reveal that he was one of al Qaeda’s most trusted leaders. The airstrike that killed Sudani took place in the Bermal district of the Paktia province, where the US operated a base before withdrawing its forces.
A video released by the Taliban shows its fighters in the northern Helmand district of Kajaki operating US-made equipment, including Humvees, overrunning a military base, and parading through the district center.
The Taliban has released a new statement attributed to Mullah Omar saying that his men have been ordered to “forcefully prevent” anyone from sowing dissent in the jihadists’ ranks in Afghanistan. Although the statement doesn’t mention the Islamic State or its followers by name, the Taliban clearly has Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization in mind.
The spokesman for the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan said it “will avenge” the death of Shahidullah Shahid “from the Americans and its allies.” He also claimed a peace council was formed to mediate the dispute between the Islamic State and the Afghan Taliban.
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost said that Hafiz Saeed Khan is alive, but did confirm that Khorasan province’s deputy emir and spokesman were killed last week in US airstrikes.
The National Directorate of Security (NDS) claimed that the US killed Hafiz Saeed Khan, the Islamic State’s leader for its Khorasan province in an airstrike in Nangarhar. The US has killed top leaders of jihadist organizations in the past, only to watch these groups expand.
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security claimed that the US killed Shahidullah Shahid, the Islamic State’s spokesman for its Khorasan province, in a recent airstrike in eastern Afghanistan. The death of Shahid, the former spokesman for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, has not been confirmed.
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Intelligence said that “Gull Zaman,” his deputy, and five fighters were killed in a US drone strike in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan.
Prior to his capture in July 2014, Maulawi Abdul Rashid Baluch was a senior Taliban member whose activities ranged from waging guerrilla warfare against NATO and Afghan forces to narcotics trafficking. Rashid also served as a liaison to al Qaeda, arranging “planning meetings” between senior Taliban leaders and al Qaeda members in Karachi, Pakistan.
The Taliban and allied groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, al Qaeda, Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, and Lashkar-e-Taiba are known to have run dozens of camps inside Afghanistan even as the Coalition was present.
Sa’ad Emarati, a senior jihadist commander as well as a member of the “Khorasan Shura,” was executed for leaving the Islamic State and rejoining the Taliban.
The attack took place in a section of Pakistan’s tribal agencies where the the US is concentrating its drone campaign in North Waziristan.
Five of the eight strikes that have taken place in Pakistan so far this year have targeted jihadists operating in the Shawal Valley, which spans both North and South Waziristan.
In late May, the Islamic State’s so-called “Khorasan province” released a video threatening the Taliban. Multiple press reports say the two sides have repeatedly fought one another since the beginning of the year. Still, the Islamic State’s presence in the region is likely much smaller than the network operated by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their allies.
A newly-released file recovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound shows that the Taliban offered its condolences on the death of a senior al Qaeda leader in May 2010. Other documents reveal that Mullah Omar’s representative corresponded with bin Laden’s chief lieutenant even as he negotiated with the State Department.
The attack, which took place the Shawal Valley, a terrorist haven, is just the sixth recorded inside Pakistan this year. The US launched 117 drone strikes in Pakistan at the peak of the campaign in 2010.
The Taliban claimed credit for today’s attack and said it was carried out by a single fighter. The jihadist group denounced the hotel for promoting “lasciviousness and indecency.”
The Taliban’s propaganda cannot be independently verified. The Pakistani government claims the Mi-17 crash, which resulted in the death of the ambassadors of Norway and the Philippines and five others, was caused by a technical malfunction.
Matiur Rehman, who has served as a senior al Qaeda leader and the operations chief for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, brought three Pakistani jihadist groups into the fold of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.
A Taliban video shows its fighters inside military bases; seized Humvees, weapons and ammunition; and Afghan security personnel who were captured during the jihadist group’s weeklong offensive in Kunduz.