Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an email to media that the group’s fighters are retreating to avoid further civilian casualties. Many were summarily executed, including one group that was massacred en masse in a bomb detonation captured on video. The Times reported Monday that the Taliban was at its strongest its been since 2001. Up to 27 small groups of local Taliban had pledged allegiance to them, increasing the number of ISIL fighters to as many as 1,100, according to official estimates.
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“Security forces are asking people to come back, but the people are still afraid, they are scared that situation might change again”, said resident Ajmal Kakar. If steps are taken to reinforce the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, then Obama will abandon his goal to bring home nearly all the USA troops before leaving office.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation coalition meanwhile said Tuesday that United States and Afghan forces carried out one of their largest joint operations in southern Kandahar province, dismantling a major al-Qaeda sanctuary in the Taliban’s historic heartland.
Senior officials in Washington have said that due to the recent advances made by the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama is having a rethink about withdrawing American troops from that country.
Afghanistan too shows signs of differences in political aspirations-a case that becomes evident in the northern and western provinces populated largely by ethnic minorities like the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras have political aspirations different from the Pashtuns who are largely concentrated in the central and eastern parts of Afghanistan.
Obama remains opposed to maintaining the current deployment of 9,800 USA soldiers, but is seriously considering retaining a counter-terrorism force of no more than 5,000 soldiers, according to reports from both the Times and Washington Post.
Third, Carter said he will include in his 2017 defense budget submission to the White House “critical financial support” to the Afghan security forces to help it maintain its numbers of 352,000 in 2017 and beyond.
Beyond the military, though, a powerful cross-section of the USA foreign policy and national security establishment is also pushing for as broad a military commitment in Afghanistan as possible.
A few shops have reopened for business two weeks after the city fell to an assault by the Taliban and allied extremist militants.
MSF said on Wednesday that an worldwide fact-finding commission it had called on to probe the strike had sent letters to the USA and Afghan governments seeking their agreement for it to launch an investigation.
War ravaged Afghanistan, the “graveyard of empires”, continues to descend into growing political instability and recurrent fratricidal conflict.
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He argued that Afghanistan may be the most democratic country in the Muslim world today, and that its government was unambiguously the most pro-American.
