Category Archives: Afghanistan

Trump reportedly tells Taliban official ‘you are a tough people’ in first phone call

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Call with official whom Trump mistakenly called ‘leader of the Taliban’ is first direct exchange between a US president and insurgent leadership since 2001

Donald Trump has spoken by telephone to a senior Taliban official at a time when a row over prisoner exchanges and a fresh outbreak of violence jeopardised a historic US-Taliban peace agreement signed on Saturday.

The conversation between Trump and the head of the Taliban’s political office, Abdul Ghani Baradar, was the first direct exchange between a US president and the insurgent leadership since the US military intervention in Afghanistan began in 2001.

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Afghanistan: bomb attack kills three as Taliban ends partial truce

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  • Motorcycle with bomb explodes during football match
  • Taliban’s week-long ‘reduction of violence’ expired on Saturday

Three people have been killed and 11 injured in a motorcycle bomb attack at a football match in eastern Afghanistan, as the Taliban announced an end to a partial truce two days after signing a deal with the US.

The Taliban had agreed to a week-long “reduction of violence” as a confidence-building measure ahead of the agreement signed on Saturday, in which the US pledged that all foreign forces would leave Afghanistan within 14 months, if the Taliban sat down for talks on Afghanistan’s future with government representatives.

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Australia welcomes US-Taliban agreement on Afghanistan troop withdrawal

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Peace deal will see troops withdrawn from conflict in which 41 Australians, 2,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Afghans were killed

Australia has urged the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan government “in good faith” as it welcomes the withdrawal of US forces from the war-ravaged country.

The foreign minister, Marise Payne, and the defence minister, Linda Reynolds, issued a joint statement on Sunday welcoming the agreement signed between the United States and the Taliban that will see the 19-year presence of coalition forces come to an end.

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Mike Pompeo hails Taliban agreement as Trump allies voice concerns

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Lindsey Graham said he is ‘very suspect of the Taliban’ while John Bolton said signing the agreement is an ‘unacceptable risk’

In Doha on Saturday US secretary of state Mike Pompeo hailed the “historic talks” which led to the signing of an agreement with the Taliban which will see the US begin to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after more than 18 years of war.

But at home in Washington, the deal was not greeted with universal enthusiasm even by allies of Donald Trump such as Lindsey Graham or former aides, among them the former national security adviser John Bolton.

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US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan

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  • US troops could leave Afghanistan within 14 months
  • Taliban agree to peace talks with other Afghans

The US and the Taliban have signed a landmark peace agreement after nearly 20 years of war that could result in American troops leaving Afghanistan within 14 months.

The deal also paves the way for talks between Afghans to end one of the longest-running conflicts in the world.

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US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw troops from Afghanistan – video

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The US and the Taliban have signed a peace agreement aimed at ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan. 

According to the agreement, the US will start withdrawing thousands of troops in exchange for Taliban commitments to prevent Afghanistan from being a launchpad for terrorist attacks

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Coronavirus in a war zone: Afghanistan braces for outbreak after first case

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Lone Kabul laboratory preparing to treat patients in the midst of political turmoil and tentative peace talks, as border with Iran closed

Preparations for an outbreak of coronavirus were underway in Afghanistan as the country confirmed its first case in the western province of Herat, which borders Iran.

Seven more suspected cases have been identified in Herat, and three cases in the nearby provinces of Farah and Ghor.

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Bernie Sanders denounces Russia’s reported efforts to aid his campaign – live

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Frontrunner condemns interference and says: ‘Unlike Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good friend. He is an autocratic thug’

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US officials told Bernie Sanders that the Russian government is working to help him secure the Democratic nomination, the Washington Post reported Friday.

And new reports are emerging that Sanders knew a month ago about the interference. Asked why the news is only coming out now, Sanders pointed to the Nevada caucuses and suggested media was to blame.

Sanders tells reporters he learned about Russian interference in his campaign about a month ago.

But asked why it came out now, Sanders points to the fact that the NV caucuses are a day away. And adds sarcastically, "Washington Post? Good friends."

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Mario Koran, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

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US and Taliban to sign deal paving way for troop pullout and peace talks

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A seven-day ‘reduction of violence’ deal will begin on Friday night, Mike Pompeo said, leading to signing of a peace agreement

The US and Taliban are due to sign an agreement on 29 February that will lead to the withdrawal of thousands of US troops and the start of comprehensive peace talks between the Afghan government and the insurgents.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, announced that the agreement would be signed once there has been a week-long “nationwide reduction in violence”, to start at midnight on Friday, according to an understanding reached by US and Taliban negotiators meeting in Doha.

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Pompeo touts partial ceasefire with Taliban in push for election-year troop reduction

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US secretary of state calls for significant drop in violence before formal peace talks can begin

Mike Pompeo has hailed “a pretty important breakthrough” in Afghan peace talks, as officials confirmed that the Taliban had agreed to a partial week-long ceasefire as a precursor to broader peace talks and the withdrawal of at least some US troops.

But the US secretary of state said that Washington still wanted to see a significant reduction in violence before formal negotiations could begin. “If we can get there – if we can hold that posture for a while – then we’ll be able to begin the real, serious discussion which is all the Afghans sitting at a table,” Pompeo said on Thursday.

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Investigation begins into alleged abuse of more than 500 boys in Afghanistan

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Government says schools to face more scrutiny after report that thousands may have been victims of paedophile ring

Afghanistan’s attorney general has launched an investigation into the alleged abuse of more than 500 schoolboys, following the discovery of a paedophile ring in the country’s Logar province.

Jamshid Rasooli, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said a committee had been appointed. “We are in the process of running a comprehensive, impartial investigation,” he said.

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US dropped record number of bombs on Afghanistan last year

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Warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions, the most since Pentagon began keeping track in 2006

The US dropped more bombs on Afghanistan in 2019 than any other year since the Pentagon began keeping a tally in 2006, reflecting an apparent effort to force concessions from the Taliban at the negotiating table.

According to new figures released by US central command, US warplanes dropped 7,423 bombs and other munitions on Afghanistan, a nearly eightfold increase from 2015.

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Two US military service members killed in Afghanistan

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  • Roadside bomb explosion seems certain to stall Taliban talks
  • Two US service members wounded, military says

Two US service members were killed and two injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Saturday.

In keeping with defense department rules, the military did not identify the service members.

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‘Blood on the ground’ at Croatia’s borders as brutal policing persists

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While heavy snow makes life unbearable for migrants, a dangerous nightly ‘game’ has led to alleged assault and injury

Photography by Alessio Mamo

In a room in the intensive therapy unit of a hospital in the port city of Rijeka, Croatia, Farouk fights for his life.

The 18-year-old Afghan has life-threatening injuries to his thorax and abdomen. On 16 November, in the woods around Tuhobić, a Croatian police officer shot Farouk – who, with dozens of other migrants, was attempting to cross the border with Slovenia.

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Afghanistan papers detail US dysfunction: ‘We did not know what we were doing’

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A key theme of the trove of documents published this week was the lack of coherence in Washington’s approach to Afghanistan from the outset

In the midst of Barack Obama’s much-vaunted military surge against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2010, Hayam Mohammed, an elder from Panjwai near the Pakistani border confronted an officer from the US 101st Airborne who had come into his village.

“You walk here during the day,” the elder told the soldier bitterly as the Observer listened. “But at night [the Taliban] come bringing night letters” – threats targeting those collaborating with foreign forces.

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Indian citizenship law discriminatory to Muslims passed

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Bill will allow refugees from nearby states to become Indian but not if they are Muslims

Indian lawmakers have approved legislation granting citizenship to migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – but not if they are Muslim. Critics of the government said the legislation undermines the country’s secular constitution, as protests against the law intensified in some parts of the country.

The citizenship amendment bill seeks to grant Indian nationality to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Parsis and Sikhs who fled the three countries before 2015.

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US lies and deception spelled out in Afghanistan papers’ shocking detail

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The tranche of documents show that in trying to paint the best pictures, those involved delivered the worst

During the Vietnam war, the daily US military briefings were known to journalists as the Five O’ Clock Follies, described by one of the AP reporters who attended them as “the longest-playing tragicomedy in south-east Asia’s theatre of the absurd”.

The Pentagon Papers, the Department of Defense’s secret history of that war, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, only underlined the level of that deception under subsequent US presidents.

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Afghanistan papers reveal US public were misled about unwinnable war

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Interviews with key insiders reveal damning verdict on conflict that cost 2,300 US lives

Hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict.

Transcripts of the interviews, published by the Washington Post after a three-year legal battle, were collected for a Lessons Learned project by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), a federal agency whose main task is eliminating corruption and inefficiency in the US war effort.

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Japanese aid chief among six dead in Afghanistan attack

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Japanese prime minister among those to pay tribute after Tetsu Nakamura is killed in deadly ambush on car

The head of a Japanese aid agency and five other people have been killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan

Among the victims was Tetsu Nakamura, 73, the respected physician and head of Peace Japan Medical Services, who had recently been granted honorary Afghan citizenship for his decades of humanitarian work in the country.

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Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope

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Australian teacher thanks those who helped free him and says he formed tight bonds with some of his captors

Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope he would be rescued during three “long and tortuous” years in captivity in Afghanistan.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his release as part of a complex prisoner swap almost two weeks ago, the Australian teacher thanked all those who helped secure his freedom, and said he had formed extraordinarily tight bonds with some of his Taliban captors.

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