Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will attend the 9th Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process ministerial meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan this week. According to Pakistan’s foreign office, Qureshi will deliver a statement “highlighting Pakistan’s positive contributions to the Afghan peace process and its support for Afghanistan’s development and connectivity within the regional framework.”

President Ashraf Ghani on Monday met with his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon in Dushanbe and both discussed the strengthening of Afghanistan-Tajikistan ties in various sectors, the Presidential Palace said. “Cooperation and relations between the two countries–that have a common language, culture and civilization–are based on the principle of brotherhood and on our being neighbors,” Rahmon said in the meeting as […]

Over the past year, almost every day at least one car has exploded in Kabul — terrifying residents with a rise in crude sticky bombs. Sticky bombs slapped onto cars trapped in Kabul’s chaotic traffic are the newest weapons terrorizing Afghans in the increasingly lawless nation, as Washington searches for a responsible exit after decades of war. The primitive devices, […]

Local officials confirmed to TOLOnews the presence of foreign fighters and their families in two districts of the eastern province of Laghman. Laghman governor Rahmatullah Yarmal said that the fighters and their families are living in Alishang and Dawlat Abad districts in the province and that they are providing military training to the Taliban.

The dates and the agenda for the Turkey conference, which many consider to be a significant event for Afghanistan’s future, have not been finalized, but it is expected that the summit will be held in early April. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated that there has to be “some kind of political settlement in Afghanistan” and that it […]

AFGHANISTAN Fighting escalated between government security forces and a Hazara militia in Wardak province after a helicopter carrying special forces troops was shot down on 18 March by what appeared to have been advanced weaponry, killing at least ten government soldiers. Crisis Group expert Andrew Watkins says the government blames the militia and has dispatched reinforcements in Wardak, targeting areas […]

A bomb explosion in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province Tuesday killed at least four people and wounded 13 others. Police said the explosive device was hidden in a motorcycle parked near an office of the Levies paramilitary force in Chaman, a remote Pakistani town next to the Afghan border. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing. Rescue workers and […]

Tensions are mounting between Afghanistan’s government and a powerful local warlord, with deadly clashes erupting in a rural province between his fighters and government troops. The fear is that the violence could be a harbinger of more chaos as U.S. troops head toward the exits. The government has launched an assault in central Maidan Wardak province, vowing to punish the […]

The U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan warned Tuesday that peace talks won’t succeed unless escalating violence stops, and urged any peace agreement to reflect that half the population today was born after the 2001 defeat of the Taliban and saw women rise to positions of economic and political power. Deborah Lyons told the U.N. Security Council that these Afghans are […]

The Biden administration is weighing the option of whether to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the May 1 deadline or to extend through November 2021. Department of Defense officials have reportedly presented President Biden with several options, including pulling all troops in the beginning of May; keeping troops in Afghanistan indefinitely; and extending the deadline for withdrawal until November. […]