At least 11 civilians were killed and more than 10 others wounded on Saturday in twin air strikes on a Taliban base in the northeastern Afghan province of Kunduz, a provincial official said.

Nineteen years after the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, American troops are still deployed in Afghanistan, although there is a new enemy that has emerged to destabilize the country—the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISKP. The Afghan Taliban—the same group that provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda as it planned the 9/11 attacks—is on the verge of entering into a power-sharing […]

Afghanistan Representatives from the Afghan government and the Taliban met in Doha this week to begin intra-Afghan peace talks, which were supposed to immediately follow the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February. Crisis Group expert Andrew Watkins says that after persistent delays, expectations for the first round of talks should remain modest as both sides still need to agree on an agenda […]

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that there are fewer than 200 al Qaeda left in Afghanistan today. Pompeo was speaking at an Atlantic Council event.

Taliban leaders told their government counterparts at the Afghan peace talks they wouldn’t seek to seize power and that their struggle was to free the country from foreign forces and establish an Islamic system.

Khan Agha has endured years of violence in Kunduz, but it was the Taliban’s attack on the strategic city in northeastern Afghanistan, as the government and insurgents were preparing for historic peace talks, that unnerved him.

A new U.S. public survey has found that two-thirds of supporters of President Donald Trump “strongly” or “somewhat” support his deal with the Islamist Taliban to extricate the United States from the 19-year war in Afghanistan.

“It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me,” Gen. Frank McKenzie told NBC News. McKenzie oversees U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The US envoy for peace in Afghanistan has told the BBC he was “not happy about” a controversial deal to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners in order to secure historic peace talks.

The Afghanistan government and the Taliban began on Saturday their first direct talks to end nearly two decades of fighting, a negotiation brokered by the U.S. as part of its plan to withdraw from its longest war.