Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) John F Sopko this week warned that the May 1 troop withdrawal deadline does not only apply to foreign military forces, numbering around 10,000 in total, but also to as many as 18,000 foreign contractors and trainers currently in Afghanistan.

Washington’s new plan for a transitional government that includes the Taliban is the best chance to accelerate stalled peace talks between the group and the Afghan government, former president Hamid Karzai said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. Karzai said after decades of war, Afghans themselves “are in a hurry for peace”.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday that Turkey plans to hold an Afghan peace conference in Istanbul in April. This comes after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said in a letter to President Ashraf Ghani, that a meeting facilitated by the UN will be hosted in Turkey to discuss the Afghan peace process.

US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in its latest report has said that security remains the most crucial and enduring high-risk area because the Taliban have not significantly changed their tactics. The report says high levels of violence, or political objectives, and terrorist groups in Afghanistan like Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) and al-Qaeda, although reduced, remain in the country. […]

Seven Civil Society Organizations have jointly slammed government for compromising on democratic values, and went as far as to label government a “dictatorship” and Afghanistan a country its people no longer consider safe to live in.

Faryab Provincial Council members on Thursday claimed Almar district in the province had fallen to the Taliban but the Ministry of Defense said there was no truth in these reports.

President Ashraf Ghani hosted a meeting Thursday of high-ranking Afghan officials and other influential individuals in order to formulate a comprehensive plan for the upcoming peace summit in Ankara, Turkey.

At least two Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers were wounded in a blast in the eastern province of Nangarhar on Wednesday morning, sources said. The incident occurred around 9 am local time in PD8 of Jalalabad city when the vehicle struck a roadside mine, the sources said. However, the local officials have not yet commented on the blast. No group […]

Prominent Afghan politicians on Wednesday urged that an assessment be made of the US-proposed draft peace plan and called on the Afghan government to not create barriers in the way of the peace process. Mohammad Younus Qanooni, the former vice president of Afghanistan, said that the peace plan which was shared with them by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad needs […]

US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said on Tuesday that the May 1st deadline for withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan may have to be reconsidered because the Taliban are not meeting their commitments under a 2020 peace deal, Reuters reported. “I’m very concerned about the viability of the peace process in Afghanistan,” Menendez said on a call with […]