Category Archives: Taliban

Afghanistan polls close after day of violence, fraud claims and chaos

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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.

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‘Voting means you’re crazy’: violence and fraud overshadow Afghanistan poll

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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.

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Afghanistan: dozens dead as country is rocked by triple attacks – video report

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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. 

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Man held hostage by Taliban-linked group says wife is ‘incompetent mother’

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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

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Donald Trump’s cancelled Taliban talks are typical of a president who blows hot and cold

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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.

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Taliban warns of more US dead after Trump says he cancelled peace talks

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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.

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Canadian man held hostage by Taliban denies assaulting wife after release

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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.

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Afghanistan: current US withdrawal plan risks ‘total civil war’, top envoys say

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  • Nine ambassadors condemn US approach to negotiations
  • Letter says full withdrawal must come ‘only after real peace’

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.

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US and Taliban close to deal to allow peace talks, Trump envoy says

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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.

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Taliban launches ‘massive’ attack on Kunduz in northern Afghanistan

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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.

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With Kabul wedding attack, Isis aims to erode Taliban supremacy

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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?

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Kabul attack: nearly 100 injured in Taliban bombing, say officials

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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.

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British Museum to return Buddhist heads looted in Afghan war

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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.

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Canada: trial of Taliban hostage accused of abusing wife resumes after delay

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  • Joshua Boyle faces 19 charges including sexual assault
  • Boyle and wife Caitlan Coleman spent five years in captivity

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.

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American who fought for Taliban to be freed early from US prison

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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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Afghan telecoms ministry hit by blast as attackers enter Kabul building

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Officials report gunfire as unknown attackers battle security forces in Afghan capital

An explosion has hit the centre of the Afghan capital Kabul and unidentified attackers appear to have entered a multistorey building housing the communications ministry where they were battling security forces, officials have said.

Gunfire could be clearly heard by witnesses in Kabul on Saturday, but the area around the site was cordoned off by security forces.

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Fugitive Taliban leader lived short walk from US base, book reveals

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Exclusive: account exposes failures of US intelligence, which put $10m bounty on Mullah Omar

The Taliban’s elusive one-eyed leader Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of US bases in Afghanistan for years, and American troops once even searched the house where he was hiding but failed to find a secret room built for him, a new biography claims.

The account exposes an embarrassing failure of US intelligence, which put a $10m bounty on Omar’s head after the 9/11 attacks in the US. Officials repeatedly suggested that, like the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Pakistan and died there.

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Afghanistan’s long road to recovery | Letter

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We should not walk away from Afghanistan even if it needs another 25 years of outside support, says Simon Diggins

Simon Tisdall’s denunciation of the US-led western involvement in Afghanistan as “17 or so years of ultimately pointless, criminal mayhem” (The US ruined Afghanistan. It can’t simply walk away now, Opinion, 8 February) is about as far wide of the mark as it is possible to be, unless you are Donald Trump. Even more curious, Tisdall then enjoins the US, presumably the “criminals” in this enterprise, not to scuttle away.

I served in Iraq and Afghanistan and am not naive enough to believe that one was the “good war”, while the other one wasn’t. But Tisdall seems to forget why we intervened in Afghanistan in the first place: to remove a monstrous regime, the Taliban, that had allowed the perpetrators of 9/11 to set up camp in their country and also terrorised its own people. Destroying the Taliban regime was the right thing to do.

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Trump wants out of America’s longest war, but Afghans can’t just walk away

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Hope is real after landmark Taliban talks, but fears remain about what might happen if US troops depart

The start of 2019 has brought for Afghanistan a tantalising hope of peace, fragile but very real, as the Taliban sat down for talks first with Americans in Qatar and this week with senior members of the Afghan elite in Moscow.

These discussions come fraught with fears, that the progress for women and civil rights will be traded away too easily, and that the Taliban may renege on any deal once US troops and their coercive power are gone.

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US framework deal with Taliban raises hope of Afghan peace

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US troops would withdraw from Afghanistan within 18 months of full agreement

US and Taliban officials have agreed in principle to the framework of a deal that could pave the way for peace talks in Kabul and ultimately the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the country’s 17-year conflict.

Under the terms of the draft framework, the insurgents would promise to stop Afghan territory being used by terrorists. The US special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, confirmed the existence of the draft in an interview with the New York Times (NYT).

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