Guns drawn, half a dozen Taliban fighters crowded into the house of a Kabul laborer Saturday. As a commander watched, his men took knives to the cushions that lined the family’s sitting room, splitting them open and dumping the stuffing onto the floor. Others pulled family photos off shelves and tossed clothing out of closets. “They said they were looking […]

A senior Taliban minister has boasted about “historic” numbers of suicide attacks the Islamist group has carried out, while complaining that the group has yet to be recognised as Afghanistan’s official government by any other country in the world. Muhammad Hanafi, the Taliban’s minister for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice, appeared in a video broadcast on national […]

Afghanistan transitions into a new phase after the withdrawal of the US forces, the fear of a destabilized Afghanistan and the looming threat of a humanitarian crisis have heightened the potential challenges for the neighboring states. For Pakistan, stability in Afghanistan mean stability in Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan have not only pledged direct humanitarian assistance but also sensitizing the world to […]

Nation states are habitually doomed to defeat their best interests. Conditions of mad instability are fostered. Arms sales take place, regimes get propped up or abandoned, and the people under them endure and suffer, awaiting the next criminal regime change. Nothing is more counter-intuitive than the effort to isolate, cripple and strangulate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. For all the […]

The head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service said that Afghanistan is becoming a hotbed for terrorism. A British man was one of two suspected ISIS recruits caught while trying to enter Afghanistan this month. Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, said the service has evidence of terrorist groups regrouping in Afghanistan and recruits are travelling to join them. In […]

The Taliban are creating a “grand army” for Afghanistan that will include officers and troops who served the old regime, the official tasked with overseeing the military’s transformation said Monday. Latifullah Hakimi, head of the Taliban’s Ranks Clearance Commission, also told a news conference they had repaired half the 81 helicopters and planes supposedly rendered unserviceable by US-led forces during […]

A recent UN report and other worrying signs point to a likely surge in both an al-Qaeda and Islamic State presence in Afghanistan in the six months since the Taliban has been in power. The rented home where the now-defunct Iraqi Islamic State (IS) leader known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi was either blown up or blew himself up during […]

The United Nations has removed former Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani from the list of heads of state. The list, published on the official website of the United Nations, also removes the name of Ghani’s wife, Rula Ghani, as Afghanistan’s first lady. However, the post of President of Afghanistan is listed as “President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”. Similarly, […]

Amnesty International said Tuesday the U.S. decision to divert half of Afghanistan’s money to victims of 9/11 attacks was “unjust” and a “mistake” and called on the U.S. administration to reverse their decision. In a statement issued by the organization, Amnesty International said the money does not belong to the victims of the September 11 attacks on the United States. […]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed concern that the Afghan people’s need for humanitarian assistance has increased by 30 percent. The committee wrote on its Twitter page on Tuesday that currently 24.4 million people across Afghanistan are in need of humanitarian assistance. According to the United Nations, more than half of Afghanistan’s population is facing a […]