South East Asia

President Ashraf Ghani said on Wednesday the Taliban still has “deep ties to al-Qaeda, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba” and wants Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists.

Addressing commandos at the Special Operations Corps base on Wednesday, during his Eid al-Adha visit, Ghani said while the Taliban still had strong ties to the terrorist groups, the Afghan government and people would never allow their country to become a safe haven for terrorists.

“Strategic momentum appears to be sort of with the Taliban,” said the the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On Wednesday, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that Afghan Taliban militants now control about half of the war-torn country’s 419 district centers.

România și-a încheiat misiunea în Afganistan, moment marcat de o ceremonie militară care a avut loc miercuri la București, iar SUA se pregătesc să își încheie la rândul lor retragerea până la finalul lunii august, asemenea tuturor aliaților. În urmă rămâne o țară cu instituții slabe și corupție generalizată, în care talibanii sunt la un pas de a prelua din nou controlul, iar organizațiile teroriste par să aibă iarăși un spațiu de refugiu, pentru a-și planifica atacurile, scriu CBC News și The Guardian.

O să deschid o temă delicată care la noi e trecută în tăcere. Ca și cum nu ar exista. O fac pentru că fratele meu a fost rănit în Afganistan, în alt război, care, prin absurdul lui, a fost parte a căderii Uniunii Sovietice.

Philosopher Georg Hegel declared the only lesson of history is that we do not learn from history. As the US prepares for the final pullout from Afghanistan and what will soon follow as the fall of the country to the Taliban an entire generation of us wonder if this is not Deja vu all over again and that what we thought we had learned from the Vietnam War proved to be a fleeting lesson.

The worsening security situation across Afghanistan in the wake of foreign troop withdrawal and Taliban advances, has forced an estimated 270,000 from their homes since January, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday, bringing the total internally displaced to more than 3.5 million.

The lightning speed with which the Taliban has overrun large swathes of rural territories in Afghanistan’s north has shocked locals and surprised foreign observers with some worrying whether the internationally recognized government in Kabul can weather the storm.

But the speed of the Taliban’s advances has everyone asking how a group composed of ragtag militants could overrun dozens of districts in eight strategic provinces that share borders with Afghanistan’s neighbors: Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iran.

Over the last week, I have been watching the Taliban sweep across the map of northern Afghanistan, capturing places that I first visited in 2001 at the beginning of the US-backed war. Taliban fighters have seized the main bridge to Tajikistan on the Amu Darya, a river that I crossed on an unwieldy raft a few months into the conflict.

As the United States continues its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, disputed reports indicate a rising number of asylum seekers of Afghan origin are crossing Turkey’s eastern border.

Videos posted on social media this weekend reportedly showed a stream of asylum seekers entering Turkey through its eastern border with Iran, raising concerns among local officials and humanitarian agencies.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as the escalating conflict brings increased human suffering and civilian displacement.

An estimated 270,000 Afghans have been newly displaced inside the country since January 2021 – primarily due to insecurity and violence – bringing the total uprooted population to over 3.5 million, the UNHCR said in a statement Tuesday.