Outside a Shiite shrine in Kabul four armed Taliban fighters stood guard on a recent Friday as worshippers filed in for weekly prayers. Alongside them was a guard from Afghanistan’s mainly Shiite Hazara minority, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
Together with Qatar, Turkey continues to work on the operation of Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport, which is important for all Afghan people, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Tuesday.
Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.
The Taliban have launched a crackdown on suspected Islamic State hideouts in southern Afghanistan, officials said Monday, following an increase in bloody attacks by the group in recent weeks.
Since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s offshoot of the hardline Islamist group has ramped up attacks on its side of the border, leaving Islamabad scrambling to reach a peace deal.
KABUL, Nov 14 (Reuters) – Taliban forces held a military parade in Kabul on Sunday using captured American-made armoured vehicles and Russian helicopters in a display that showed their ongoing transformation from an insurgent force to a regular standing army.
Militant attacks inside Pakistan have been rising, highlighting an uncomfortable truth: America’s exit from neighboring Afghanistan has emboldened would-be militant extremists.
Afghanistan’s ex-finance minister has blamed the government’s fall on corrupt officials who invented “ghost soldiers” and took payments from the Taliban.
Khalid Payenda told the BBC that most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government’s books did not exist.
In the villages that once bore the brunt of Afghanistan’s front-line fighting, the Taliban victory has broken a cycle of air attacks, gun battles and funerals.