Trump claims US-Taliban talks are back on but it is unclear if key disputes have been settled
Donald Trump says talks with the Taliban are back on but it is unclear if the disputes that hobbled the last attempt to reach a peace deal – cancelled by a presidential tweet in September – have been resolved.
The insurgent group responded to Trump by telling Agence France-Presse it was “way too early” to discuss resuming direct talks.
Continue reading...Donald Trump made an unannounced visit to US troops in Afghanistan on Thursday, his first visit to the country where the US has been at war since late 2001.
Related: Fired navy secretary blasts Trump over 'shocking' handling of Navy seal case
Continue reading...Afghan president Ghani hopes move will help secure release of American and Australian
Afghanistan’s president says he has ordered the release of three Taliban fighters in an effort to persuade the insurgent group to free a kidnapped American and Australian professor.
Timothy Weekes, an English teacher from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, and Kevin King, from Pennsylvania, were abducted three years ago from outside American University of Afghanistan in Kabul by fighters in military uniform.
Continue reading...State blames Taliban for blasts targeting worshippers during Friday prayers
Police and local residents were searching for bodies in the rubble of a mosque in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, after bomb blaststhat killed at least 69 people during Friday prayers.
The explosives had been placed inside the mosque in the Jawdara area of Haska Mena district.
Continue reading...Canadian Joshua Boyle was described as manipulative and abusive to his American wife after they returned from Afghanistan
Canadian prosecutors have described Joshua Boyle as manipulative and abusive, dismissing the former hostage’s testimony as a “fictional, self-serving narrative” as the crown began its closing arguments in the high-profile trial.
On Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors attacked the credibility of Boyle, who, along with his American wife Caitlan Coleman, spent five years as captives of a Taliban-linked militia after they were kidnapped in Afghanistan.
Continue reading...Bomb wounds 15, despite 70,000 police and troops at polling stations, and turnout set to be low
Afghanistan’s presidential polls have closed amid accusations of fraud and misconduct. Insurgent attacks aimed at disrupting voting in the country’s north and south caused dozens of casualties.
An upsurge in violence in the run-up to the elections, following the collapse of US-Taliban talks to end America’s longest war, had already rattled Afghanistan in the past weeks. Yet many voters yesterday expressed equal frustration over relentless government corruption and widespread chaos at polling stations.
Continue reading...Incumbent president says election is vital to give government a democratic mandate in talks with Taliban
Afghanistan must choose a new president this week, but every election over the last decade has been riddled with fraud and marred by violence, and fears are growing that the poll on may be the worst yet.
It comes as the war is raging with unprecedented intensity. Last week alone, dozens were killed when the Taliban flattened a hospital in an attack in the south, and a US drone strike hit a group harvesting pine nuts in the east. And looming over the poll is the future of controversial US efforts to negotiate a troop withdrawal with the Taliban, suspended after a tweet by President Donald Trump but not entirely dead.
Continue reading...At least nine people have been wounded in eastern Afghanistan by a suicide bomber and gunmen in an attack on Wednesday, that came 24 hours after two other attacks in the country left more than 48 people dead.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks, while no one has yet said they were behind Wednesday’s attack.
Continue reading...Joshua Boyle, charged with sexual assault, tells court estranged wife Caitlan Coleman was unfit to parent the their four children
The Canadian man who spent five years held hostage in Afghanistan with his American wife has accused her of “incompetence” as a mother as his trial for sexual assault nears its conclusion.
Related: Canadian man held hostage by Taliban denies assaulting wife after release
Continue reading...President’s snakes-and ladders approach to diplomacy raises eyebrows in Kabul and Washington
Donald Trump’s boundless faith in his own magnetism and negotiating skills has taken a knock after the cancellation of his bizarre plans for talks with Taliban chiefs. Most Afghans, including the president, Ashraf Ghani, can live with that. Since they believe Trump was selling them out, they will be glad the talks bombed.
The fact that Trump secretly planned a personal meeting with a murderous group proscribed by the US as terrorists days before the 18th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks that they assisted, is said to have raised eyebrows in Washington. That’s diplomat-speak for shock-horror.
Continue reading...President tweets that he called off planned Camp David meeting after Kabul attack killed US soldier
Donald Trump says he has cancelled secret peace talks on Afghanistan scheduled for Sunday that would have brought him face to face with Taliban leaders at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the hills of Maryland state – with the Islamist militant group warning on Sunday that the snub meant more American lives would be lost.
The US president made the remarkable claim in a series of tweets on Saturday evening declaring he had “called off” the negotiations after the Taliban claimed responsibility for a blast in Kabul that killed 12 people including a US soldier on Thursday.
Continue reading...Trial testimony wraps up in case of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman, who married in 2011 and were kidnapped in Afghanistan
A Canadian man once held hostage with his American wife in Afghanistan denied assaulting her following their release, in trial testimony that wrapped up on Thursday.
Joshua Boyle, 35, was arrested and charged with assault, sexual assault and forcible confinement at the end of 2017 just two months after he and his wife Caitlan Coleman, 33, returned to Canada after their five-year hostage ordeal.
Continue reading...The majority of America’s ambassadors to Afghanistan since the removal of the Taliban government have condemned the US approach to negotiating a troop withdrawal, warning it risked a return to “total civil war”.
Writing the day after a draft agreement was announced, the nine men, including a former deputy secretary of state, said they supported peace talks in Afghanistan.
Continue reading...Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy for peace in Afghanistan, says agreement would reduce violence and allow ‘intra-Afghan’ talks
US and Taliban negotiators are close to an agreement that would reduce fighting and allow full peace talks among Afghans, a top US official said on Sunday, a day after insurgent forces stormed the strategic northern city of Kunduz.
But only hours after Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born US diplomat overseeing negotiations for Washington, spoke the Taliban attacked a second Afghan city, Puli Khumri, the capital of Baghlan province, an official said.
Continue reading...Assault comes as US continues to seek agreement with insurgent group on ending what is America’s longest war
The Taliban have launched a new attack on one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, Kunduz, the government said on Saturday, even as the insurgent group continued negotiations with the US on ending America’s longest war.
The militants, who have demanded that all foreign forces leave the country, now control or hold sway over roughly half of the country and are at their strongest since their 2001 defeat by a US-led invasion.
Continue reading...As the US and Taliban negotiate peace, Isis sees a chance to sow fresh chaos in Afghanistan
Even by the bloody standards of Afghanistan, it was a brutal attack: a suicide bomber at a wedding celebration, detonating his device as children danced and the happy couple completed their marriage rituals. In an instant more than 60 of the 1,000 guests were dead, hundreds injured.
Few events are so joyous and optimistic as a wedding. So why would a terrorist group – even one as brutal as Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility – want to attack one?
Continue reading...Car explodes by police station as violence continues despite looming US-Taliban pact
A car bomb exploded on Wednesday outside a police station in the Afghan capital, Kabul, wounding at least 95 people, government officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for what it said was a suicide attack.
There has been no let-up in violence in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban and the US appearing to be close to reaching a historic pact for American troops to withdraw, in exchange for a Taliban pledge the country would not be used as a base from which to plot terrorist attacks.
Continue reading...Stolen artefacts likely removed by Taliban will go on display before being sent to Kabul
Fourth-century Buddhist terracotta heads probably hacked off by the Taliban and found stuffed in poorly made wooden crates at Heathrow are to be returned to Afghanistan where they will be star museum exhibits.
The British Museum gave details on Monday of one of the most significant repatriation cases it has dealt with relating to the illegal looting of artefacts from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Continue reading...The trial of Joshua Boyle, the former hostage of a Taliban-linked group in Afghanistan who was accused of violence against his wife, has resumed after the court ruled it would hear testimony about the couple’s sexual history.
Boyle was arrested at the couple’s former Ottawa apartment on New Year’s Eve 2017, just two months after he and Caitlan Coleman were released from five years of Taliban captivity.
Continue reading...John Walker Lindh to be released but some politicians say he may still be security risk
John Walker Lindh, the American captured in 2001 fighting for the Taliban, is to be released early from federal prison despite some US politicians expressing concerns he may still be a security risk.
Lindh, photographed as a bearded 20-year-old when captured in Afghanistan, will leave a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on probation on Thursday after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence, according to a prison official.
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