For the second time this week, Taliban insurgents attacked and overran an Afghan Army base in the country’s north, this time in Baghlan Province. The offensive lasted about five hours, and left the Taliban in control of the military base and a nearby police checkpoint.

Starting before dawn, Taliban fighters quickly overwhelmed the police checkpoint, killing nine police, then moved on to the army base. They got to the base in Baghlan-e Markazi District and took that as well, killing another 36 troops.

Baghlan Governor Abdul Hai Nemati says that reinforcements have been sent to try to recapture the area. Checkpoints in the area were reportedly set on fire by the Taliban, however, so not everything can be recovered

ISIS has increased its efforts in order to expand its influence in Afghanistan. The local ISIS branch is believed to have about 3,000-5,000 members, including local Afghans, Pakistanis and Uzbeks.

According to available data, most of the terrorists are in the province of Nangarhar. However, cells of the terrorist group operate across the entire country.

Over the past few months, ISIS members have carried a series of terrorist attacks against government targets as well as engaged members of the Taliban in separate clashes and hit-and-run operations.

The ISIS expansion is fueled by fighters and field commanders, whom had fled Syria and Iraq where the terrorist group’s self-proclaimed caliphate was recently defeated. Another factor contributing to growth of the ISIS influence is a poor humanitarian, economic and social situation in the country.

The latest conflicting reports about whether or not the Taliban has taken the strategic city of Ghazni between the Afghan capital of Kabul and Kandahar reflect the dilemma and difficulties that the American forces face today.
The concerns come despite the firepower and technology that the US has applied against an insurgent force, which has taken over more than 50 percent of the country. This is despite America having almost completely driven out the Taliban when it first invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.

The battle for Ghazni and indeed the effort to defeat the Taliban in remote areas of the country suggest that, notwithstanding the intelligence, technology and communications capabilities at its disposal, the US is losing the battle to secure the country.

If the Taliban occupies Ghazni by defeating Afghan forces, it effectively would cut off southern Afghanistan from the Kabul government, which would represent a significant development.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan has become a significant menace against the West despite the fall of the group’s caliphate in Iraq and Syria, a top American commander warned this week.

In June, Brig. Gen. Lance R. Bunch, the top U.S. air commander in Afghanistan, noted that the ISIS wing has attempted to “establish” its own “caliphate” twice this year alone in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar along the Pakistan border, considered the group’s primary stronghold in the region.

U.S.-NATO-assisted Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have so far managed to thwart the ISIS attempt to establish a caliphate in Afghanistan, Gen. Bunch declared.

A US airstrike meant to hit Taliban forces in the Azra district of Afghanistan’s Logar province instead led to the deaths of at least nine Afghan security forces, local officials said Tuesday.

The aerial bombardment also wounded some 14 officers, according to AFP, who reported that the strike came after Afghan officials were engaged in an "hours-long battle with insurgents overnight."

The Afghan Ministry of Defense has confirmed that US Special Forces have been deployed to the western province of Farah near the Iranian border.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish said on Sunday that the deployment aimed to train Afghan troops on how to use new weapons, stressing that US Special Forces would not take part in combat operations.

He did not provide further details and it is yet not clear how many troops have been deployed to the province.

The deployment comes despite President Donald Trump's election campaign promises to end US military intervention in Afghanistan.

British Islamic State fighters have now moved into Afghanistan, the country's ambassador to the UK has revealed.

Said Jawad said the fanatics posed a threat not just to his country but to Britain, as they could sneak home and wreak havoc.

He said both countries' intelligence agencies were working to 'make sure they do not pose a threat if they go back to the UK', having tracked down fanatics with British passports.

The Pentagon is trying to convince the Afghan government to withdraw troops from sparsely populated districts, which is tantamount to abandoning vast swaths of land to the Taliban. What’s more, the White House is for the first time prepared to take a seat at the negotiating table across from the Taliban.

The New York Times notes that Trump’s new strategy is to a large extent building on the groundwork of his predecessors, George Bush and Barack Obama, who were planning to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan, handing over to the Taliban and other armed gangs those territories that were actually already under their control. The Americans are advising the Afghan authorities to focus their efforts on defending major population centers, with a natural priority on Kabul, Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Jalalabad.

Afghanistan, long acknowledged to be America's "forgotten war", has finally returned to the news of late. But this time, in a shocking twist on the now 17-year long conflict, the US is negotiating with the Taliban.

Perhaps this is why the mainstream media has by and large not given this bombshell story the coverage it deserves? Or do the major networks feel the American public has long ago stopped paying attention and will therefore yawn at any headlines containing the words 'US Troops/Afghanistan'?

As Daniel McAdams explains, last week US State Department officials met with Taliban leaders in Qatar. At the request of the Taliban, the US-backed Afghan government was not invited. The officials discussed ceasefires and an end to the war.

Meanwhile, the US inspector general charged with monitoring US spending on Afghanistan reconstruction has reported that since 2008, the US has completely wasted at the least $15.5 billion. He believes that's just the tip of the iceberg, though.

President Trump has become the third president to renew a post-9/11 emergency proclamation, stretching what was supposed to be a temporary state of national emergency after the 2001 terror attacks into its 17th year.

But the ongoing effects of that perpetual emergency aren't immediately clear, because the executive branch has ignored a law requiring it to report to Congress every six months on how much the president has spent under those extraordinary powers, USA TODAY has found.

Exactly 16 years ago Thursday, President Bush signed Proclamation 7463, giving himself sweeping powers to mobilize the military in the days following terrorist attacks that crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. It allowed him to call up National Guard and Reserve troops, hire and fire military officers, and bypass limits on the numbers of generals that could serve.

For over a decade, the Taliban have refused to negotiate with the Afghan government, which they view as a puppet regime controlled by Washington. They have instead sought to speak directly with the United States, without Kabul’s mediation. In 2015, the United States sought to initiate peace talks with the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha, but the effort collapsed after the Afghan government denounced it and demanded a seat at the table. The negotiation process has remained dormant since then.

Responding to requests from members of Congress, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has made his first attempt to calculate exactly how much money the US wasted in Afghanistan.

After 10 months of research, SIGAR said they could document $15.5 billion in waste since SIGAR’s inception in 2008. This is 29 percent of all of the spending audited by the SIGAR, who concedes the figure is probably low.

Current SIGAR John Sopko says that the figure is “likely only a portion of the total waste, fraud, abuse, and failed efforts.” He warned that the $4 billion in stabilization programs only “enabled corruption and bolstered support for insurgents.”

Taliban fighters have overrun two districts in the southeastern province of Paktika, on the border with Pakistan, officials said Tuesday as heavy fighting continued across Afghanistan.

Local officials said Taliban fighters began attacking security checkpoints and the centers of Omna and Gayan districts in Paktika on Sunday, forcing Afghan security forces in the area to pull out, leaving large quantities of weapons and equipment.

"After almost two days of heavy fighting, Taliban captured both district centers," provincial council member Fazel Rahman Katawazi said, adding that three members of the Afghan security forces were killed and a number of others injured.

The Taliban have taken a series of district centers this year, many of which have been subsequently retaken by Afghan security forces, which control areas with around two-thirds of the country's population.

Underscoring a policy change that’s been speculated for awhile, the Trump Administration has issued orders to US diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Trump had previously ruled out talks with the Taliban, but officials have recently suggested support for the Ghani government’s attempts to start talks.

This comes amid reports of the administration considering a full strategy review for the Afghan War, as nearly a year after President Trump’s announced escalation, things are still going poorly. With no real chances for a military victory, officials are hoping to try to get back to the negotiating table.

Gen. John Nicholson followed this report out of the White House with a statement of his own, saying he is “ready” for direct talks with the Taliban in an effort to end the 17-year-long war. He says the US must have a “key role” in the talks.

NATO’s summit has ended with a new declaration issued on the war in Afghanistan, some 17 years from the initial invasion. The declaration committed NATO troops to remain in the country for an indefinite amount of addition time.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that the goal is “lasting peace and reconciliation,” and the declaration said NATO troops would remain in Afghanistan “until conditions change.” The declaration also committed to subsidize the Afghan military through at least 2024.

There is no timetable for conditions changing, and 17 years in the situation has if anything gotten progressively worse. Though the declaration made vague reference to “progress” on the ground, the Pentagon has made similar claims, and US officials have admitted that the lack of progress is likely to lead to another round of strategy reviews.

The Obama administration, citing “political concerns” in 2013, derailed a plan to prosecute Taliban drug kingpins in U.S. courts that could have curtailed unprecedented heroin operations in Afghanistan that fueled the deadly opioid crisis across the United States, a Politico investigation found.
Identified as Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and U.S.

Department of Justice (DOJ) legal advisers at the time, the authors of the plan, code-named Operation Reciprocity, told Politico, “The real reason it was shut down was fears it would jeopardize the administration’s efforts to engage the Taliban in peace talks and still-secret prisoner swap negotiations involving U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.”

Last year, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after being exchanged by the Obama administration for five high-risk Taliban commanders in 2014, including at least some believed to have returned to terrorist activities.

Airdrops in Afghanistan grew nearly ten-fold this year, as supplies were increasingly ferried out via cargo aircraft and parachuted into Afghanistan to sustain operations against the Taliban this spring and summer.

More than 327,000 pounds of supplies were airdropped into Afghanistan by the end of May this year, with the bulk of those drops occurring in April and May, according to numbers provided by U.S. Air Forces Central Command’s Combined Air Operations Center.

That number stands in stark contrast to 2017, when the Air Force dropped only about 33,000 pounds of supplies into Afghanistan throughout the year, but still far short of the nearly 11 million pounds dropped closer to the height of the war in 2013.

One U.S. service member was killed and two others were wounded Saturday in what’s believed to be an insider attack in southern Afghanistan.

The wounded troops are being treated and are in stable condition, officials with the Resolute Support mission said in a statement.

The incident is under investigation.

The name of the service member killed in the incident will not be released until family members are notified, officials said.

Saturday’s incident marks the first U.S. troop death in Afghanistan in more than two months.

The United States Senators approved a lengthy slate of nominations in the waning hours of work before their Fourth of July break, including a new commander for US and NATO’s Resolute Support Forces in Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the 17th commander to oversee the American and NATO mission in Afghanistan, will succeed Gen. John Nicholson in that role and received his fourth star as part of the confirmation process.

Miller had a largely friendly confirmation hearing before the committee last week, in which several senators said they expected him to be confirmed easily.

He was questioned on plans to turn around the 17-year-old war.

According to a report by The Hill, US Senator Elizabeth Warren pushed Miller the hardest on the issue, quoting several past defense leaders as saying Afghanistan reached a turning point.

The United States’ military’s air assault campaign in Afghanistan is reaching heights not seen since at least 2009 - as far back as available data goes - according to a new report from Air Force Central Command.

The uptick in payloads delivered comes 17 years since the US invaded the country in an effort to oust the Taliban from power. Just last November, America's top general in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said that the war was in a "stalemate."

As of May 2018, the US has already dropped 2,339 weapons from the Afghan skies since the start of the year. May saw the deployment of some 591 munitions in Operation Freedom Sentinel, more than any month since October 2017.

On May 5 2018 Kazakhstan ratified an agreement with the US for the transit of US military cargo and possibly even troops (under the euphemism of ‘advisors’ or ‘engineers’) to Afghanistan via the Caspian Sea route.

The ostensible reason is that the US’s long established supply lines to Afghanistan via Pakistan are now ‘under threat’. However, as is often the case nowadays, the reality is rather more complicated.

Just five months before the agreement was reached, in December 2017, purportedly at the instigation of the businessman Anatolie Stati who is involved in a longstanding legal dispute with the Kazakh authorities, the Bank of New York Mellon froze $22.6 billion of funds belonging to Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund.

Hundreds of Afghan peace marchers arrived exhausted in the capital, Kabul, on Monday after spending the fasting month of Ramadan crossing the sun-baked, war-torn country, much of it under Taliban control.

The marchers, all men, including teachers, students and war victims on crutches and one in a wheelchair, were welcomed along the way by village women carrying the holy Koran, men singing and dancing or offering bread and yoghurt, some in tears.

"I saw and learnt things that I had never thought of before," said Iqbal Khayber, 27, a medical student from Helmand.

"We met people in areas controlled by the Taliban and in areas under government control - everyone is really tired of war."

The march was triggered by a car bomb in Helmand on March 23 that killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens. No group claimed responsibility.

The Iranian foreign ministry voiced pleasure in the Afghan government and Taliban's commitment to the temporary ceasefire in the country, and welcomed its extension.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi welcomed the extension of the ceasefire in Afghanistan on Sunday, calling for continued commitment and respect for it by both sides.

He also expressed the hope that continued ceasefire can pave the ground for the start of a new and constructive process for peace talks and establishment of stability and tranquility in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan extended its unilateral ceasefire with the Taliban following an initial truce observed by both sides over the Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

President Ashraf Ghani appealed to the militants to follow the government's lead and enter peace talks.

At least 17 people were killed as an explosion rocked a meeting of Taliban and Afghan security forces, gathering during an unprecedented ceasefire for the Eid holiday, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a local official said.
Casualties include Taliban, Afghan security forces, and civilians, Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor of Nangarhar, said.

The timing of the bombing appears to be significant. On Saturday, Taliban members entered the Afghan capital, Kabul urging people to come forward and take selfies with them. The unusual move reportedly occurred elsewhere in the country, as photos and videos on social media showed Taliban fighters giving hugs to locals and Afghan forces across several provinces.

A report from a top U.S. military watchdog has finally acknowledged that the UH-60A+ Black Hawks that the United States is supplying to the Afghan Air Force are less capable and harder to maintain than the Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters they have now. The review raises concerns that this could limit Afghanistan’s ability to conduct operations across the country unless steps are taking to mitigate the loss of capability, something we at The War Zone have long warned could easily be the case.

The Pentagon’s own Office of the Inspector General included these frank admissions in a routine, periodic update on U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, nicknamed Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, and assistance to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), which it released in May 2018. The Department of Defense leads this oversight effort, which also includes representatives from the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

Moscow will continue efforts to involve the radical Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) in direct talks with Kabul, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following the meeting of CSTO foreign ministers on Monday, adding though that those efforts have failed so far.

According to Russia’s top diplomat, "together with normalizing the military situation in Afghanistan" heads of ministries supported Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s call for a direct dialogue with the Taliban members.

"Russia has long advocated for this kind of dialogue, the Taliban members are part of the Afghanistan’s society. Provided that they abandon a military approach to defending their interests, they should be made direct participants of the political process," he said. "So far the Taliban members have not demonstrated readiness to this kind of dialogue, but we will continue our efforts, particularly on the back of today’s agreements between the CSTO foreign ministers," the minister added.

US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than 17 years ago in October 2001. It’s has been a continuous war marked by US military occupation.

The justification is “counterterrorism”. Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism, allegedly responsible for attacking America on September 11, 2001.

The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks. US troops are still present and deployed in Afghanistan.

The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under “the doctrine of collective security” was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared “armed attack” “from abroad” by an unnamed foreign power, namely Afghanistan.

Yet there were no Afghan fighter planes in the skies of New York on the morning of September 11, 2001.

An Afghan leader has issued a plea for Britain to deploy more troops to the country in a bid to quell the resurgent Taliban, Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.
Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan government’s chief executive, who met with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Thursday, called for a renewed long-term military commitment by the UK and its NATO allies.

His plea comes as UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is reportedly considering increasing the number of troops in the country by 400 following an appeal by US President Donald Trump.

When NATO issued a similar appeal last year, the ministry of defence responded saying the “UK keeps its contribution in Afghanistan under regular review to ensure it remains suited for the needs of the mission.”

U.S. warplanes over the last few years have pulverized an estimated 40 American taxpayer-funded Humvees worth about $70,000 each that fell into the hands of the Taliban after the United States provided them to the Afghan security forces, USA Today reported this week.

President Donald Trump has nominated Lt. General Austin Miller to replace General John Nicholson to command US Forces-Afghanistan, the Defense Department said in a press release.

"Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis has announced that the president has made the following nomination… Army Lt. Gen. Austin S. Miller for appointment to the grade of general, and assignment as commander, Resolute Support Mission, North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and commander, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan," the release said on Tuesday.

Earlier, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said that the United States has failed to stabilize Afghanistan despite 16 years of occupation and billions invested in stability programs.

The Taliban say they “categorically reject” a statement made by the US commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan about secret talks taking place between the Kabul government and the insurgents. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, distributed to the media on Friday, that Gen. John Nicholson’s remarks, made to reporters at the Pentagon from his Kabul office, were a “baseless claim,” AP reports.

It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.

Senior Taliban officials have been secretly negotiating with Afghan officials on a possible ceasefire, according to the Pentagon. “A lot of the diplomatic activity and dialogue is occurring off the stage, and it’s occurring at multiple levels,” General John Nicholson said Wednesday in a teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon. He would not identify the figures involved in the negotiations, except to say that they included mid- and senior-level Taliban officials, AFP said. “I should point out they met in secret. This is how they were able to advance the talks,” he said, citing the need for the “confidentiality of the process.” Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in late February proposed peace talks with the Taliban, saying they could be recognized as a political party if they accepted a ceasefire and recognized the country’s 2004 constitution.

There is no other way than to consider a new Afghan security agreement that will bring together both regional players and global powers to ensure the security in the country, Afghan politicians have told Sputnik, stressing that the Obama-era Bilateral Security Agreement with Kabul has proven completely ineffective.

Kabul needs to reconsider the 2014 Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) signed by the Obama administration and the government of Ashraf Ghani as the people of Afghanistan are increasingly losing trust in their international partners, politicians told Sputnik Afghanistan.

According to Russian and Chinese law enforcement agencies, militants fleeing by sea from Syria and Iraq follow a route from the Qasim port in the Pakistani city of Karachi to Peshawar, and are then distributed along the Nangarhar province in the east of the country.

After the scrapping of the Iran nuclear deal by the Trump administration, the re-imposition of sanctions against the Persian nation, and the threat to impose the “toughest sanctions in history,” the US gear-up to destabilize or perhaps even go to war with Iran is becoming more and more visible by the day. A war of words between Iran and the United States is now ensuing with actual military aggression against Iran by Israel in Syria promising to provide an even greater likelihood that the U.S. military and America’s busy intelligence community will soon be working even harder to ensure that Iran is no longer able to resist Atlanticist hegemony.

However, the plan to destroy Iran is nothing new as anyone who has been following the US war machine can easily attest to.

Despite committing additional resources to Afghanistan, US troops and local security forces have made little inroads against the Taliban. Some Afghan lawmakers are questioning whether the country needs US assistance at all.

A report to Congress prepared by the Pentagon’s inspector general challenges an earlier assessment of the US military that the latest increase of support to the Afghan national security forces helped turn the corner and gain momentum against the militant movement. Over the first quarter of 2018 the Taliban’s threat has not greatly diminished.

“The Taliban continued to hold territory and launched devastating terrorist attacks in Kabul and across the country,” Glenn Fine, the deputy Pentagon inspector general, wrote in an introductory note to the report, which was released on Monday.

US Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller shocked observers Wednesday at a US Navy Department briefing when he made the tone-deaf claim that American forces and their Afghan partners are the mujahedeen in Afghanistan now.

The number of British troops in Afghanistan could top 1,000 for the first time in years following calls from Donald Trump for US allies to do more to combat the Taliban.

Defence secretary Gavin Williamson is understood to have written to the prime minister recommending that numbers be boosted, although a decision is yet to be made.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the UK’s contribution to the mission was kept “under constant review”.

According to official reports, after almost two decades of continuous deployment of several thousand US and NATO servicemen in Afghanistan, the level of production and drug trafficking has increased by 1,000% compared to levels in 2001, the year Washington announced its intentions to invade Afghanistan. There’s no logical explanation American political figures can provide us for this fact, since among the stated goals of the persistent military presence of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan includes both fighting against terrorism and combating drug trafficking.

Seventeen years of wasted taxpayer money and government mismanagement: millions of U.S. dollars spent on projects to rebuild Afghanistan that have not helped the Afghan people.

In some cases, these projects actually put Afghans in danger.
This is a Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.

In order to attempt to curtail the flow of terrorist between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the former country is building a wall on the border it shares with the latter. “For the better security of our country and nation, we had to do this work,” a Pakistani army official, Brig. Nisar.

Nisar, who only uses one name, told journalists during a government-organized visit to the border that this is in Pakistan’s security interest. The barrier has angered the Afghan government, which disputes the location of the boundary and says the fence will” tear communities apart.”

According to NBC News, construction began last year on two fences that parallel each other as they snake through the remote, mountainous landscape. Standing 13 feet high on the Afghan side and 11 feet on the Pakistani side, sharp spirals of silver barbed wire are cradled at the top of each.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has offered an updated report on the shrinking Afghan military, revealing that their previous report was in error. The previous report, released earlier this month, said the Afghan military had lost around 30,000 fighters, or 10%.

SIGAR now says that the actual number was only about half that. The Pentagon, which provided SIGAR with the data, accidentally forgot about a 17,000-man border patrol that had been transferred from the police to the army, and which didn’t end up in the previous report under either category.

Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, from the US-led Afghan mission, confirmed his office was behind the problem and “it was our bad.” SIGAR noted this was just the latest in a series of problems they’ve had getting reliable data out of the Pentagon.

The United States Army recently awarded BAE Systems $97 Million in orders for new night vision goggles and thermal weapon sights for the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III and Family of Weapon Sight-Individual (ENVG III/FWS-I) program. The all-in-one weapon sight system allows soldiers to acquire and eliminate enemy targets through a wireless connection that transmits the weapon’s crosshairs and surrounding imagery directly into the soldier’s goggles.

On April 27 the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg issued an ultimatum to the Taliban fighting the US and NATO allied forces that have invaded and occupied Afghanistan; negotiate–meaning surrender-or be destroyed. Taking his cue from the Nazi diktats in the countries they invaded and occupied across Europe in the Second World War, he acted like a Reinhardt Heydrich, the Nazi SS Security General, making threats against the resistance on behalf of the warlords in Washington and the other NATO capitals and like the German Nazis before him, repeated the same lies the Germans used; that NATO’s presence “creates the conditions for peace and reconciliation.” But a more severe war lurks under their guise of peace.

“Full spectrum dominance” was the watchword in a 2000 document, “Joint Vision 2020” (updated from a 1996 version), which the authors described as a “conceptual template” for the U.S. military’s evolution over the two decades to come. Its language was even more hubristic than that slogan suggests: “a force that is dominant across the full spectrum of military operations – persuasive in peace, decisive in war, preeminent in any form of conflict… prepared to win across the full range of military operations in any part of the world… [with the ability] to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the full range of military operations.”

Defeat any adversary? Control any situation?

The number of U.S.-funded Afghan security force personnel has sharply declined over the past year, even as fighting and terror attacks escalated in many parts of the country, a U.S. government watchdog said on Monday.

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces as of Jan. 31 numbered 296,409 people, with the Afghan National Army at 85.4 percent of its authorized strength and the Afghan National Police at 93.4 percent of its authorized strength.

The figures, compiled by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan from the Afghan military, were in a report issued late Monday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Construction, or SIGAR.

The information had been classified or restricted from the public for the past six months, SIGAR said.

Two Islamic State suicide bombers struck in Afghanistan's capital on Monday, killing 25 people, including nine journalists who had rushed to the scene of the first attack, in the deadliest assault on reporters since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

An Agence France-Presse photographer, a cameraman for the local Tolo TV station and several reporters for the Afghan branch of Radio Free Europe were among the fatalities, police said. At least 45 people were wounded in the attacks, according to Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai, who said four police were among those killed.

The attack was the latest in a relentless string of large-scale bombings and assaults in the capital and elsewhere in Afghanistan this year.

For Iraq, my final estimate of about 2.4 million people killed was based on accepting the estimates of the 2006 Lancet study and the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey, which were consistent with each other, and then applying the same ratio of actual deaths to passively reported deaths (11.5:1) as between the Lancet study and Iraq Body Count (IBC) in 2006 to IBC’s count for the years since 2007.

Mohammad Alam Ezadyar, the first deputy speaker of Afghanistan’s Upper House of Parliament told Sputnik about Kabul’s desire to hold a permanent seat in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the US military presence in the country, and shared his opinion on why terrorists are being repositioned from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan.

Speaking about the presence of Daesh jihadists in Afghanistan, Ezadyar opined that this terrorist group is a large project of the world powers aimed at posing threats to neighboring countries.

"Currently, Daesh fighters are being repositioned from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan in order to pose threats to Central Asia countries, the Caucasus and China. Our people and politicians believe it's a strategic plan advocated by the world's major powers. It's said not only in Afghanistan but also abroad."

Bombings at voter registration centres in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in Baghlan province have killed at least 63 people and wounded more than a hundred others, health officials said.

At least 57 people were killed in Kabul when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the doorway of an ID distribution centre in the city on Sunday, officials said.

Six more people were killed later in the day in Baghlan's Pul-e-Khumri city, when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb near another voting centre. All six were from the same family.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group said it carried out the Kabul attack, but no group has claimed responsibility for the Baghlan blast yet.

The Kabul bombing occured in the Dasht-e-Barchi area, where many of the country's Shia Hazara minority reside.

Among the victims were many women and children, witnesses said.

The War on Terror is a sham. We are just here to guard Drugs for the CIA and Bankers. The American People need to be told.

Two days later Pat Tillman was dead. Executed by 3 shots to the forehead at close range, from a NATO Rifle.

If you are guarding (Opium) Poppy Fields, and you complain, you are “Suicided”

The Taliban Destroyed all the Poppy fields. It was corrupting their country and their youth.

This caused the US Bankers and New York Bankers, to lose $300 million a month in Drug Money.

Two brigades and a regiment are headed abroad in the upcoming months, according to three Wednesday releases from the Army.

The 3rd Cavalry Regiment will head to Iraq this spring, and in the summer, the 101st Airborne Division Sustainment Brigade will head to Afghanistan while the 4th Combat Aviation Brigade heads to Europe, according to the releases.

“This brigade is no stranger to Afghanistan, as this will be our fifth rotation there since 2001,” Col. Stanley Sliwinksi, commander of the Fort Campbell, Kentucky-based 101st Sustainment Brigade, said in a release.

The United States has spent more than $800 billion on the never ending war in Afghanistan, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The bulk of that money was spent fighting the Taliban, but billions have also gone toward rebuilding the country and investing in its infrastructure. A lot of those projects haven't gone well, and a $60 million power system in northeast Afghanistan that doesn't provide any power is just the latest example.

According to a new report from John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) mismanaged the project so badly that its powerstation isn’t connected to a power source, hasn’t been tested, and “may be structurally unsound and pose a risk to Afghans who live near transmission towers and lines,” or who work at the station.

“Okay buddy, how ya doing today?” a Marine asks as he stands over the body of a dead Afghan man. “You look like you just got fucked.”

A cameraman with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment stands nearby, rolling tape. He zooms in to show the man’s mangled right hand, where a round impacted before entering his torso.

It’s sometime in 2011 in Kajaki, Afghanistan. A scout sniper team has been cleared to take the shot, suspecting the target of being a spotter for Taliban fighters in the area. When the patrol arrives to inspect the body, they find that the now-dead man was a local shopkeeper, and he was unarmed. It’s unclear whether the man, whose killing was cleared under the rules of engagement, was an observer for the Taliban, or an innocent bystander.

U.S. military members often say “we own the night” due to their use of night vision devices, but the maxim no longer holds true.

That’s because the Taliban has picked up much of that same tech, either by seizing it from slain Afghan troops or by acquiring it up on the black market. And while the Pentagon is well aware of the problem, officials don’t have a good way to counter it.

Taliban fighters, many now outfitted with night vision goggles and infrared lasers, have more than doubled nighttime attacks on Afghan and U.S. troops between 2014 and 2017, according to a new report from The New York Times.

The U.S. military plans to loot Afghan mineral deposits for some time. A 2007 Pentagon memo that the New York Times quoted in a 2010 article says that Afghanistan could be the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The Companies of United States are planning to extract Afghanistan’s enormous reserves of valuable rare earth minerals, Reuters reported after U.S. President Donald Trump met with his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani on Thursday.

Afghanistan has some of the world’s largest un-extracted reserves of rare earth minerals valuable in electronic production, such as lithium, as well as gold and various gemstones. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the total value at least US$1 trillion.

According to a White House statement, the presidents agreed that the development of Afghan minerals by U.S. companies would “develop materials critical to national security,” as well as “defray some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more self-reliant.”

A new report from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (DoD IG) exposes even more fraud, waste and/or corruption in America’s ongoing war in Afghanistan. This latest report reveals that more than $3.1 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds provided to the Afghan Armed Forces from 2014 through 2017 was grossly mismanaged.

The Afghanistan War is the longest in United States history, and despite initial claims that the goal of the invasion was to keep Americans safe by destroying the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the result has been a massive increase in opium production that has fueled an on-going opioid crisis in the United States and ensnared more than 2.5 million Americans in heroin addiction.

As whistleblower and former FBI contractor Sibel Edmonds noted, before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there were around 189,000 heroin users in the United States. By 2016, that figure increased to 4.5 million—an estimated 2.5 million heroin addicts and 2 million casual users.

The number of heroin overdose deaths in the U.S. also skyrocketed with a 533 percent increase from around 2,000 deaths in 2002 to more than 13,200 deaths in 2016. The is part of more than 64,000 deaths attributed to drug overdoses in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Russia has rejected comments by NATO's top commander in Afghanistan that it has been supporting and even supplying weapons to the Taliban, in a clash of words that underlines growing tension over Moscow's involvement in the conflict.

In an interview with the BBC last week, General John Nicholson said that Russia had been acting to undermine US efforts in Afghanistan despite shared interests in fighting terrorism and narcotics, with indications that Moscow was providing financial support and even arms.

"We've had weapons brought to this headquarters and given to us by Afghan leaders and said this was given by the Russians to the Taliban," he said.

A statement from the Russian embassy in Kabul dismissed the comments as "idle gossip", repeating previous denials by Russian officials.

wounded in a car bomb explosion near a sports facility in southern Afghanistan, a health official has said.

Omar Zwak, spokesperson for the governor of Helmand province, said Friday's blast in the city of Lashkar Gah took place close to the Ghazi Muhammad Ayoub Khan stadium, where a wrestling match was taking place.

Aminuallah Abed, chief of the provincial public health department, said that 40 people who were wounded were receiving treatment at a local hospital.

The death toll is expected to rise, with hospital sources telling Al Jazeera that a number of wounded people were in serious condition.