Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
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).
Insurgents demonstrate their commitment by naming top commander as chief negotiator
Taliban and US negotiators have reportedly agreed parts of a potential peace deal a day after the Afghan insurgents signalled their commitment to talks by naming one of their most senior commanders as chief negotiator.
News of progress in the Qatar talks, and the appointment of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, appeared to offer for the first time in nearly two decades a glimmer of real hope for a path to peace in Afghanistan.
Attackers detonated car bomb inside complex in Maidan Wardak province, say officials
The Taliban have launched a major attack on an Afghan military compound in central Maidan Wardak province, officials have said, with some putting the death toll at more than 100 people.
Monday’s incident at a campus of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) is the latest in a series of deadly attacks in recent months by the Taliban, which has seized control of about half of Afghanistan.
Wedding singer Abdul Salam Maftoon was called the Canadian prime minister’s ‘lost twin’ after appearing on Afghan Star
An Afghan talent show contestant’s striking resemblance to Justin Trudeau has turned him into an unlikely celebrity in the war-torn country.
Abdul Salam Maftoon, a wedding singer from a village in the remote and impoverished northeastern province of Badakhshan, had never even heard of his more famous doppelganger until a judge on the popular television music contest Afghan Star pointed out the uncanny likeness.
Training on a base in California, and later serving in Afghanistan, made me confront the reality of American empire, and the injustice that pervades society at home
Number of innocent people killed or maimed in Afghan war rises 36% despite overall fall in casualties worldwide
Civilian deaths and injuries in Afghanistan from explosive weapons rose by more than a third last year, against a downward trend globally, according to a survey seen by the Guardian.
Most of the 4,260 civilians killed or injured in explosions in the country in 2018 – up from 3,119 in 2017 – were victims of suicide attacks, found a report by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).
Laila Haidari risks her life to run the country’s only private rehabilitation centre, helping hundreds of addicts a year
Laila Haidari is considered a criminal, despite never committing a crime. The 40-year-old works with drug addicts in Kabul. “The addicts I work with are considered criminal and dangerous and by extension I am considered criminal,” she says.
Despite opposition and death threats, eight years ago, Haidari opened the city’s only private drug rehabilitation centre, which so far has helped nearly 4,800 Afghans who would otherwise have ended up on the streets, or worse, dead.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States was "in very strong" peace negotiations in Afghanistan but he did not known whether they would be successful. "I really think the people of Afghanistan ... are tired of fighting," Trump told reporters after delivering a Thanksgiving holiday message to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, scene of one of America's longest-ever wars.
U.S. President Donald Trump hinted on Thursday he may visit Afghanistan, scene of one of America's longest wars but a country he has yet to visit almost two years into his presidency. Delivering a Thanksgiving holiday message by teleconference to troops in Afghanistan, Trump told a U.S. Air Force general he would see him back in the United States, before adding: "Or maybe I'll even see you over there.
The mayor of a Utah city was killed during an attack in Afghanistan while he was serving with the state's National Guard, the town's temporary mayor Brent Chugg confirmed to CBS Salt Lake City affiliate KUTV. North Ogden Mayor Brent Taylor died Saturday in an apparent "insider attack" in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.
Two top leaders in Kandahar Province were assassinated in an attack that narrowly missed the top American commander in the country, Gen. Austin Miller.
In 1930, Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly across the United States as she completed a nine-stop journey from Roosevelt Field, N.Y., to Glendale, Calif.
Abu Sayeed Orakzai was the fourth ISIS leader in Afghanistan killed since July 2017, according to the provincial governor of Nangarhar, NBC News reported Sunday. The airstrikes were launched near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to Agence France-Presse, Fox News reported.
American diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar a week ago without Afghan government officials present, in a reversal of a longstanding United States policy, two senior Taliban officials said on Saturday. The United States State Department has not denied that its diplomats had taken part in such talks - a significant shift in American strategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Congress has appropriated $126 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since Fiscal Year 2002," wrote Special Inspector General John F. Sopko in testimony delivered in May to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management. By 2014, he added, inflation-adjusted appropriations for that purpose "had already exceeded the total of U.S. aid committed to the Marshall Plan for rebuilding much of Europe after World War II."
Is America's longest war heading to a quiet end? NBC News reported earlier today that Taliban sources claim to have engaged in "indirect negotiations" with the US, primarily through former commanders forced out of the conflict. The talks are fraught with risks, particularly from some surprising sources: U.S. officials are meeting with former Taliban members amid intensifying efforts to wind down America's longest war, three of the militant group's commanders told NBC News.
A Massachusetts hiker whose failure to notify his wife that he was spending the night in a hotel and prompted an extensive search and rescue operation in the White Mountains has donated $3,000 to the... Brandon Gillis does not think he played his best two rounds of golf at the 115th New Hampshire Amateur Championship Wednesday at Hanover Country ... (more)
Mary Jennings "MJ" Hegar, a 42-year-old mother and Republican turned " independent Democrat " running for Congress in Texas, is an Air Force veteran and retired Air National Guard helicopter pilot who didn't let an abusive biological father, knee injuries, and sexual bias, harassment and assault stop her from doing three tours in Afghanistan that climaxed with a rescue mission gone awry in which she strapped herself to the skids of a chopper and fired at the Taliban. Her service earned her a Purple Heart.
The Pentagon has identified the soldier killed in an apparent insider attack Saturday in Afghanistan as Army Cpl. Joseph Maciel of South Gate, California.