While the focus on the fighting in Afghanistan has been centered on the Taliban’s offensive in Helmand’s provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, the Taliban has meanwhile launched major attacks elsewhere in the country.

A crowd gathered recently around an old Afghan villager as he wailed in inconsolable anguish, holding him up as his body buckled. Word quickly spread that the man had just lost his entire family to a Taliban attack in his home province of Helmand.

Pakistan’s National Assembly will host a Pakistan-Afghanistan trade and economic forum next week to enhance bilateral relations and find ways to overcome transit and trade challenges.

At least 15 Afghans, many of them elderly women, were killed and more than a dozen injured in a stampede in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province while waiting for visas from the Pakistan consulate, officials said Wednesday.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that current troop levels in the country were at around 12,000 and any further adjustments remain conditions-based.

More than 50 Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) members were killed in an early morning attack by the Taliban in northern Takhar province.

Jammu and Kashmir Estates Department today sealed the office of Kashmir Times in Srinagar that was allotted to it in a government building in Press Enclave that houses several other newspaper offices in similar buildings.

Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah on Monday met with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani in his ongoing efforts to garner support from regional countries for the Afghan peace process.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi reportedly cautioned Hizb-e Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on Monday against “spoilers” in the Afghan peace process and emphasized the importance of being vigilant.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in their most recent report that as of December 19, US Congress appropriated nearly $134 billion since the 2002 fiscal year for Afghanistan reconstruction, of which nearly $19 billion was unaccounted for.