More civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2018 than in any of the previous nine years, according to a newly released report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The majority of these deaths were caused by operations carried out by the Taliban and the Islamic State’s so-called Khorasan province. And even though the Taliban is nominally concerned […]

A new round of peace talks between Taliban and U.S. negotiators is to begin in Doha this week and will include the militant group’s co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, according to Taliban and diplomatic sources in Qatar.

The conflict in Afghanistan, the latest in a series of civil wars over the past 40 years, is strategically stalemated. With the Taliban and other militant groups gradually gaining a grip on large areas of the countryside, the Kabul government and its international allies have recently redoubled their efforts to seek a negotiated peace agreement with insurgents to end the […]

ISIS’ Afghanistan-based affiliate has emerged as a major threat capable of carrying out direct attacks on the US and is actively using its members’ social media to acquire contacts in the United States, a US intelligence official in Afghanistan tells CNN. “They are closest to having the capacity to attack the homeland from Afghanistan,” the official said, saying the US […]

A Taliban commander named Mullah Mohammad and his bodyguard were killed as government forces stormed their hideout in Baghlan-e-Markazi district of the northern Baghlan province on Tuesday, an army spokesman Mohammad Hanif Rezai said Wednesday. A weapon cache of the militant group was also destroyed during the attack, the official added. Taliban militants who operate in parts of Baghlan province […]

Afghanistan has expressed concerns to the UN Security Council about a planned visit by Taliban negotiators to Pakistan, asserting that the militant group’s members traveling to Islamabad are under UN sanctions and that Kabul should have been consulted prior to any such meeting.

Taliban negotiators say they will meet U.S. representatives in Pakistan on February 18 as part of ongoing Afghan peace talks, although a State Department official said the U.S. team had not yet received an invitation to the talks.

Afghanistan’s Taliban have named a 14-member negotiating team for upcoming peace talks with U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. The Taliban’s team includes the jailed brother of the head of the powerful Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday offered the Taliban the possibility of opening an office in Afghanistan but the proposal was swiftly spurned by the group that is determined to keep his government out of accelerating peace talks.

The Pentagon has stepped up airstrikes and special operations raids in Afghanistan to the highest levels since 2014 in what Defense Department officials described as a coordinated series of attacks on Taliban leaders and fighters.