The United Nations Security Council warns in its latest report on al Qaeda and the Islamic State that both groups maintain a significant presence in Afghanistan. The UN describes al Qaeda’s relationship with the Taliban as “long-standing” and “strong,” finding that the international terrorist organization “continues to see Afghanistan as a safe haven for its leadership.”

Security forces in crackdown against militants have killed eight Taliban fighters and arrested four others charged with involvement in subversive activities in Kandahar province, a security official, Nisar Ahmad Hand said Tuesday.

Negotiations between the Taliban and the United States officials in Qatar entered the fifth day in an attempt to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan. The talks mark the highest level negotiations between the two sides since the US ramped up peace efforts last year.

The role of Pakistan and Afghanistan in the region has become more important with the announcement of CPEC. The upcoming hub of Gwadar is all set to change the shape of international trade in South Asia. In order to resolve key issues and to bring peace in Afghanistan, Pakistan consistently been holding dialogues with Taliban on the request of Trump. […]

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.