Predicting the imminent downfall of the Islamic Republic has been a staple among American pundits since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran 41 years ago. Amazingly, despite incessant attempts at regime change by the US and its cohorts, Iran has survived and, in some ways, managed to flourish. Yet very few in the West have acknowledged ...
Known as The Afghanistan Papers, The Post’s series was based on hundreds of confidential interviews that SIGAR conducted with key figures in the war. The inspector general had drawn on the interviews to publish seven reports — called “Lessons Learned” — about policy failures in Afghanistan. But the reports left out the harshest and most frank criticisms ...
Recently, several US soldiers pleaded guilty to stealing money earmarked for Afghanistan reconstruction, but it’s not the first time Americans have been caught stealing from other countries’ pockets.
A member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council has censured the US assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and the second-in-command of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, saying President Donald Trump was not aware of the fact ...
Major General Qassem Soleimani, whose assassination by the US was confirmed earlier on Friday, had played a major role in defending Iran against its enemies and assisting regional countries fight foreign occupation and terrorism.
From the shortcomings of the US military’s newly-rewritten counter insurgency doctrine – described by one interviewee as “colonial” in its conceit – to a tolerance of widespread corruption and “warlordism” blamed for fueling the resurgence of the Taliban, a key theme of many of those who spoke to Sigar was the lack of coherence in Washington’s approach ...
China’s shared border with Afghanistan through the Wakhan Valley and its model of non-intervention are advantages it can exploit to cement its foothold
Still, life has improved, particularly in the country’s cities, where opportunities for education have grown. Many more girls are now in school. And democratic institutions have been built — although they are shaky at best.
Drawing on estimates from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, we assessed how much the United States spent on different ...
I think that both the Taliban and maybe the government also know that war is not the way of solving the issue. And it is required to sit down for meetings. Of course if the Taliban takes over provinces and Kabul through war, it is still required to hold a meeting. If opposition groups come and show disagreement, the Taliban are compelled to meet them....
A few hours after the plane took off in total darkness with windows drawn and lights off, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham came to the back of the plane to brief us. “We’re going to Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.” This would be President Trump’s second trip to a conflict zone, his first to Afghanistan. The highly clandestine nature of ...
Medico International and the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), which conducted the study, are now calling on Germany and its partners in Europe to halt deportations to Afghanistan. People returned to the country are left economically destitute, in danger of attacks and vulnerable to recruitment efforts by the nation's many ...
According to the 2019 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), deaths from terrorism fell for the fourth consecutive year, after peaking in 2014. The number of deaths has now decreased by 52 per cent since 2014, falling from 33,555 to 15,952. The annual Global Terrorism Index, now in its seventh year, is developed by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) ...
The NATO mission’s statistics, on the other hand, show a far lower proportion: only three percent of the 7,260 casualties it counted were caused by Afghan security, and only two percent by international forces. The NATO figures were released 31 October through the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which reports to the ...
Along with China, Afghanistan’s neighbor Iran has a stake in the Afghan peace process, say analysts, but Iran reportedly turned down an invitation to the Moscow-hosted meetings that included US representatives.
Quoted in a report by Iran Front Page, Seyyed Rasoul Mousavi, the Iranian Foreign Minister’s special assistant and Director General of the ...
The Afghan government declined to comment until after publication of the report, but a military official acknowledged that the Afghan special units at times make mistakes.
“Because they carry out the most complicated operations but we are not assassins and there is oversight and accountability,” said the official, who declined to be identified.
In President Trump’s unique vocabulary, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the extremist leader of the Islamic State whom thousands of followers hailed as “caliph,” died “like a dog … whimpering, crying, screaming” beneath a compound in northwestern Syria. Trump shared the news of Baghdadi’s death in a televised announcement from the White House on Sunday morning ...
In the early 2000s, the war in Afghanistan was largely fought in the country’s rural areas. As the war dragged on, entrepreneurs established social media companies that now drive modern politics. The world evolved into the present social media-dominated age; so did the Afghan war.
On why the talks were abruptly called off, Kabulov dismissed Trump’s pointing the finger at the Taliban killing a U.S. soldier, saying: "Indeed, terrorist attacks by the Taliban took place before. We believe that the death of an American serviceman in the course of another terrorist act of the Taliban was only a pretext for the announcement by the ...