Late yesterday, U.S. and Afghan forces targeted al Qaeda members in Musa Qala, a Taliban-controlled district in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province. The U.S. military said that “massed al Qaeda figures” at the location “presented an imminent threat.”

Note: On Sept. 19, Thomas Joscelyn testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs at a hearing titled, “The Trump Administration’s Afghanistan Policy.” You can read his testimony, which mainly focuses on the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, here. An excerpt, without footnotes, is presented below.

The Taliban reiterated that its prime objectives in negotiations with the US is to get Coalition forces to withdrawal from Afghanistan and the “establishment of an Islamic government,” a thinly veiled reference to the return of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Afghan officials have publicly identified several of the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) members who were killed during an operation in Helmand province earlier this week. The raid quickly proved to be controversy, as some reports indicate that dozens of civilians perished during the clash in Musa Qala, a known Taliban stronghold.

A total of nine militants including a Taliban shadow district chief have been killed in the eastern region of the war-battered country over the past 24 hours, officials said Tuesday.

US and Afghan Special Forces carried out a raid in Helmand specifically targeting a senior al-Qaeda leader who was hiding in a bomb factory which was producing explosive devices possibly to be used against voters in the impending presidential election, security officials have claimed.

The Taliban took credit for killing three troops in a green-on-blue attack Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Monday afternoon, but an U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman fired back at the claims on Twitter, clarifying that the only injuries sustained were non-life threatening.

Since the partition of India in 1947, which established the two independent states of India and Pakistan, Pakistan has infiltrated soldiers into Indian Kashmir, assisted anti-Indian Muslim terrorists in Jammu-Kashmir and sponsored many murderous operations inside India proper.

Afghanistan must choose a new president this week, but every election over the last decade has been riddled with fraud and marred by violence, and fears are growing that the poll on may be the worst yet.

A senior U.S. defense official in Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul on Friday said Islamic State fighters were hiding among pine nut harvesters when a U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 32 people.