Iran hasn’t attacked another country in centuries! The Islamic Republic seeks regional peace and cooperation with other nations.

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

Despite of 19 years US and allies strong presence, unfortunately still the Afghan Air Forces have not achieved self-sufficiency. In its recent report, SIGAR has said that the US aids to AAF have decreased.

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 ...

A new chapter was opened in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, when the US warplanes began launching heavy strikes against the Taliban in different parts of Afghanistan. 

Nine rounds of peace talks between the Taliban—as the key anti-government militants and the US representative remained unproductive, after the later withdrew from the process, on the pretext of an American soldier’s death in a Kabul car-bomb attack claimed by the militants.

The U.S. has not said what was planned for Camp David, the wooded Maryland retreat that has hosted several peace summits, but the outlines of its intentions seem clear. A week earlier, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said negotiators had reached an agreement with the Taliban, adding that he would announce details imminently, pending President Donald Trump’s ...

The “agreement in principle” that U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has hammered out in nine rounds of talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar would take the first tentative steps toward peace since U.S. and allied forces deployed to Afghanistan following the attacks on 9/11, according to senior Afghan and Trump Administration officials familiar with ...

A suicide bombing at a wedding party in Kabul claimed by a local Islamic State affiliate has renewed fears about the growing threat posed by its thousands of fighters, as well as their ability to plot global attacks from a stronghold in the forbidding mountains of northeastern Afghanistan. The attack came as the Taliban appear to be nearing a deal ...

Civilians bore the brunt of escalating violence in July, with preliminary UN findings showing that more than 1,500 civilians were killed and injured, the highest number of any month this year, and the highest number documented in a single month since May 2017, the UN said in a statement.

Reductions in the U.S. presence should be tied to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan.

So far, the Taliban’s position on the option of direct talks with the government of President Ashraf Ghani has remained stiff.

The first main issue pertains to serious disagreements among the Taliban’s leadership about the peace talks. Like the Afghan state, the Taliban polity is marred by infighting, with its two powerful political and military commissions seemingly divided on the peace issue. Taliban hardliners believe they can still score a victory and have no military ...

On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan wrapped up a three-day visit to Washington, D.C., at the invitation of President Trump. The much-anticipated visit followed last year's cuts in U.S. aid to Pakistan and wrangling between the two leaders on Twitter, where Trump accused Pakistan of deceit and Khan retorted that Pakistan wasn't to blame ...

Experts believe that the anxiety in India stems from the fact that even after providing $650 million to $750 million as humanitarian and economic aid, making it the largest regional provider of assistance for Afghanistan, it has been left out of the peace talks. Adding to concerns is that Pakistan has joined the U.S., Russia and China to strike a deal ...

Libyan government fighters discovered a cache of powerful American missiles, usually sold only to close American allies, at a captured rebel base in the mountains south of Tripoli this week.