In Afghanistan on 22 September at least 40 civilians attending a wedding party were killed in a raid conducted by Afghan soldiers and supported by US airstrikes. Four days earlier a US drone attack killed 30 civilians and injured 40 others while they were resting after collecting pine nuts in a forest.

The insurgents in Afghanistan are killing people, too, as evidenced by the plethora of suicide bombings, and the Taliban have stated that they will continue their fight against “foreign occupation”. The entire country is being torn apart by savagery on the part of all those involved. It is a broken nation.

SOURCE: COMMON DREAMS
Dozens of Afghan civilians are dead, local officials said Monday, following operations carried out late Sunday by U.S. and Afghan forces targeting al Qaida fighters.

The incident in the southern province of Helmand, which came just days after a U.S. drone strike killed at least 30 farm workers in eastern Nangarhar province, highlights the fragile situation for civilians as the U.S. enters its 19th year of war in Afghanistan.

Details on exactly how many people were killed and who was responsible for the Sunday attacks remain unclear, a fact attributed at least in part to the area being under Taliban control. The U.S. has blamed the "majority of the deaths" on al Qaida. U.S. and Afghan officials say they're investigating.

The New York Times reported:

Authored by Eoin Higgins via CommonDreams.org,

A U.S. drone attack killed 30 pine nut farmers and wounded at least 40 others in Afghanistan Wednesday night, the latest killing of innocent civilians by American forces as the "war on terror" enters its 19th year.

The farmers had just finished work and were sitting by a fire when the strike happened, according to tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul.

"Some of us managed to escape, some were injured, but many were killed," said farm laborer Juma Gul.

Reteurs reported that there may be more farmers missing:

Haidar Khan, who owns the pine nut fields, said about 150 workers were there for harvesting, with some still missing as well as the confirmed dead and injured.

A survivor of the drone strike said about 200 laborers were sleeping in five tents pitched near the farm when the attack happened.

On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children sit on the carpeted floor of a room at the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Borderfree Center. The women cluster together. All wear burqas, but because of the heat they push the steel blue veils back, revealing their faces. Most of the men wear traditional tunics and pakol hats.

Parents and children alike listen intently to Masoma, a young Afghan woman who coordinates the Center’s “Street Kids School.” She explains the importance of steady attendance, and parents nod in agreement. Most of the 100 students come on time for their Friday classes, but a handful had recently skipped, showing up only on the day when the center distributes monthly food rations for the Street Kids families.

The U.S. war in Afghanistan has led to the deaths of about 2,400 American service members, including 16 in combat action this year. Some 20,000 more have been wounded, many grievously.

But there’s another set of revealing numbers about the war that exposes its sprawling nature. Data provided by the Pentagon shows that more than 775,000 U.S. service members have deployed to Afghanistan at least once. The numbers detail the story of a war that has persisted for an entire generation.

Authored by Whitney Webb via MintPressNews.com,

Today the event that defined the United States’ foreign policy in the 21st century, and heralded the destruction of whole countries, turns 18. The events of September 11, 2001 remains etched into the memories of Americans and many others, as a collective tragedy that brought Americans together and brought as well a general resolve among them that those responsible be brought to justice.

While the events of that day did unite Americans in these ways for a time, the different trajectories of the official relative to the independent investigations into the September 11 attacks have often led to division in the years since 2001, with vicious attacks or outright dismissal being levied against the latter.

Bipartisan critique of Trump’s plan to roll out an Afghan peace plan during the 9/11 anniversary from Camp David misses the point: negotiation was the only hope to avoid more needless American deaths.

With the Taliban already engaging in several offensives across Afghanistan, they’ve really got the government on the defensive. Friday, they added to the fighting, with a new offensive against Farah City in Western Afghanistan.

Heavy clashes are reported in several parts of Farah Province, and while police say the Taliban have been pushed out of the city, they seem to be moving to continue to contest the territory.

The Taliban controls much of Farah Province going into this fight. The province is an important opium-farming area which is a potential source of revenue. With control over much of the surrounding area, it’s only natural they would also want the provincial capital.

While the Trump Administration has yet to officially sign the peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the clearest sign yet that they’ll do so came in a new interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

While US officials have often been unrealistically rosy-eyed about the state of the war, Pompeo took the talking points to a new level, and now is arguing effectively that the US has won the war in Afghanistan, and “delivered” on all of its goals.

Earlier, Trump tweeted that he had decided to cancel a meeting with the Taliban movement's leadership after the group claimed responsibility for staging a terrorist attack in the Afghan capital Kabul which left “12 innocent people” dead, including a US soldier.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton has described a peace agreement that Washington is trying to clinch with the Taliban as irrelevant, reminding President Donald Trump of the deal’s “potential pitfalls”, Bloomberg cited several unnamed sources as saying.

The sources added that Bolton specifically berated US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad for agreeing to terms offered by the Taliban that Bolton claimed were too vague.

The president announced on Twitter on Sunday that the meeting was cancelled after the Taliban admitted to murdering a dozen people in an attack.

The attack killed an American soldier and that ruined the peace talks between the United States and the Taliban.

“Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday.

Authored by US Army Major (ret.) Danny Sjursen via AntiWar.com,

It has taken me years to tell these stories. The emotional and moral wounds of the Afghan War have just felt too recent, too raw. After all, I could hardly write a thing down about my Iraq War experience for nearly ten years, when, by accident, I churned out a book on the subject. Now, as the American war in Afghanistan – hopefully – winds to something approaching a close, it’s finally time to impart some tales of the madness. In this new, recurring, semi-regular series, the reader won’t find many worn out sagas of heroism, brotherhood, and love of country. Not that this author doesn’t have such stories, of course. But one can find those sorts of tales in countless books and numerous trite, platitudinal Hollywood yarns.

SOURCE: INDIATIMES.COM
KABUL: The United States would withdraw almost 5,000 troops from Afghanistan and close five bases within 135 days under a draft peace accord agreed with the Taliban, the chief US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said on Monday.

The deal, reached after months of negotiations with representatives from the insurgent movement, must still be approved by US President Donald Trump before it can be signed, Khalilzad said in an interview with Tolo News television. "In principle, we have got there," he said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has been briefed on a draft of the accord and will look at details of the deal before giving an opinion, his spokesman said on Monday.

In exchange for the phased withdrawal, the Taliban would commit not to allow Afghanistan to be used by militants to plot attacks on the US and its allies.

SOURCE: THE INTERCEPT

After 18 years of war, and months of direct talks, the United States appears to be on the brink of reaching an unprecedented peace agreement with the Taliban that would bring about U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A draft agreement was reached in March, and negotiators in Qatar have reportedly been ironing out the details ahead of a September 1 deadline — including exactly when U.S. troops will withdraw and when a permanent ceasefire between the parties will take effect. The U.S. is reportedly also seeking assurances from the Taliban that it won’t harbor foreign terror groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and will engage in dialogue with the Afghan government after the U.S. military leaves.

The war in Afghanistan has reached new levels of insanity as a UN report shows US forces are killing more civilians than ISIS and Taliban combined.

The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war, U.S. officials say.

The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between 8,000 and 9,000, the officials said. That number would be nearly the same as when President Trump took office.

US willing to draw down troops for a ceasefire.

With the new round of Doha peace talks between the US and Taliban getting underway, reports are that a peace deal could be reached. On Thursday, reports indicated that could include the US withdrawing 5,000 troops as an initial cut.

Though no deal is apparently finalized as of Thursday evening, the indications are that the US has expressed a willingness for more or less immediate draw down of forces in return for a Taliban ceasefire.

US officials have long presented the peace process as four stages, with deals on withdrawing foreign troops, the Taliban pledging to keep ISIS and al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, the ceasefire, and then a power-sharing deal between the Taliban and Ghani government.

The US has spent more than $50 million on drug treatment programs in Afghanistan, but these programs are losing money and may not even be working, a new report has concluded.

The report, by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), makes clear how difficult it is to even begin to gauge the effectiveness of the programs.

“Overall, we just found that the State Department failed to create performance standards and requirements for these programs,” said Lauren Mick, public affairs specialist for SIGAR.

Out of $56 billion that the Department of Defense (DOD) has spent on Afghanistan’s reconstruction, only $21 billion can be properly accounted for.

The $35 billion discrepancy is revealed in a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

SIGAR’s core mission is “to prevent and detect waste, fraud and abuse” in the Afghanistan aid program. Yet the Pentagon is claiming that it would be “extremely labor intensive to compile information” on how exactly the remaining $35 billion has been used.

The Afghan government asked for “clarification” following U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks Monday about being able to wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the earth” if he really wanted to win the war there.

US President Donald Trump is seeking help from Pakistan to extricate Washington from the war in Afghanistan, saying that he could “win” that war in a week if he wanted to kill millions and wipe off the country.

“I could win that war in a week,” Trump said on Monday, as he met with Pakistani PM Imran Khan at the White House. “Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth... literally in 10 days.”

“I don’t want to go that route,” the president added. “I don’t want to kill 10 million people.”

Instead, Trump said, Pakistan will help “extricate” the US from the long war in Afghanistan the previous administrations have got entangled in.

A Palestinian protester uses a slingshot to hurl stones at Israeli troops during clashes on the Gaza-Israel border, east of Gaza City, July 19, 2019. At least 74 Palestinians were injured on Friday during clashes with Israeli soldiers stationed on the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said. (Str/Xinhua)

GAZA, July 19 (Xinhua) -- A total of 74 Palestinian demonstrators were injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers in the eastern Gaza Strip on Friday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.

Among the injured were two journalists and four field paramedics, a ministry report said, adding 36 were injured by Israeli soldiers' gunfire.

According to local media, around 6,000 demonstrators gathered on Friday afternoon in eastern Gaza close to the border with Israel.

It was the 67th weekly anti-Israel protest, better known as the Great March of Return rally which started in late March last year.

Details have emerged on an insider attack on Wednesday in Afghanistan, when an Afghan soldier shot and killed the commander of the Afghan Army’s 3rd division, Col. Mateen Mujtaba, in the Ghazni Province.

Afghan officials reported this was an insider attack, saying the soldier who killed the colonel was a Taliban insider, and was killed himself when other troops returned fire during his shooting. They claimed only the colonel was killed.

The Taliban confirmed that the attacker was theirs, but also claimed that US soldiers were killed in the insider attack. US officials have not reported any such casualties, nor did Afghan officials mention US troops being present, only calling them “near” the attack.

An Afghan regional governor said 25 members of the country's elite commando units have been killed in fighting with the Taliban.

The incident, which occurred on July 15 in the northern province of Badghis, is the latest in which specially trained Afghan military units have suffered unusually high death tolls.

In comments to RFE/RL, Badghis Governor Abdul Ghaffar Malakzai blamed a lack of coordination as the main reason for the deaths of the commandos. He did not elaborate.

He also said that more than 20 Taliban militants were killed in the clashes.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said that at least 39 commandos were killed. He said that the militants also captured 16 soldiers.

Badghis, located along the border with Turkmenistan, has been the scene of frequent Taliban attacks.

There is a reason James Simons' RenTec is the world's best performing hedge fund - it spots trends (even if they are glaringly obvious) well ahead of almost everyone else, and certainly long before the consensus.

That's what happened with Deutsche Bank, when as we reported two weeks ago, the quant fund pulled its cash from Deutsche Bank as a result of soaring counterparty risk, just days before the full - and to many, devastating - extent of the German lender's historic restructuring was disclosed, and would result in a bank that is radically different from what Deutsche Bank was previously (see "The Deutsche Bank As You Know It Is No More").

Majorities of the American public generally and US veterans specifically agree that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not worth fighting, according to survey results released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center think tank.

More than 60% of US veterans surveyed stated that the Iraq War was not worth fighting considering the costs to the US. On the other hand, 33% of veterans said that the Iraq war was worth fighting when considering the benefits to the US. In comparison, 62% of non-veteran respondents claimed the Iraq War was not worth fighting, while 32% claimed it was. Fifty-eight percent of US veterans and 59% of non-veterans also said that the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, while around 40% of both veterans and civilians claimed the opposite.

“Veterans who served in either Iraq or Afghanistan are no more supportive of those wars than those who did not serve in these wars,” the study states. “And views do not differ based on rank or combat experience.”

Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On June 26 two US special forces soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, bringing the total of US military personnel who have died in that useless war to 2429, according to iCasualties, an independent casualty tracker.

No matter what one might think about the rights and wrongs of the war in Afghanistan, it is sad to record such fatalities, and the question that comes to mind is: What did they die for?

According to the US State Department the military are there because “we continue to invest US resources to help Afghanistan improve its security, governance, institutions and economy,” and the Pentagon says “the principle goal… is to conclude the war in Afghanistan on terms favourable to Afghanistan and the United States.”

How?

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban confirm the next round of US-Taliban talks will begin in Doha on June 29.

The United States has agreed to completely withdraw its troops and not to interfere in Afghanistan in future.

Amid reports about a possible meeting between the US and the Taliban in Doha next week, a Taliban spokesman has said that “the United States has accepted to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan”.

Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for Taliban’s spokesman in Qatar, said in a tweet on Tuesday that besides accepting the withdrawal of its troops, the US has vowed not to do any interference in Afghanistan’s affairs in the future.

He also said that the promises by the US are “a good progress” in the peace talks.

Following this statement by Taliban, US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted, “This is a framework which the Taliban accepts.

US negotiations with the Taliban have been making substantial progress in recent months, and there seem to be high hopes that a meeting next week in Doha would be a breakthrough moment. Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen suggested the deal is already effectively made.

Shaheen announced on Twitter Tuesday that the US had pledged to accept a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and furthermore to never again interfere in Afghan affairs.

For the second time in less than a month, US forces carried out airstrikes “in self defense” in Afghanistan, only to discover that they were actually attacking Afghan security forces. The Wednesday strike ended up wiping out an entire unit, though officials have yet to disclose the exact number of deaths, beyond it apparently being everyone present.

The previous attack saw US ground troops believing they were under fire, and the warplanes attacking police, killing 18. In this case, too, US officials said they believed the troops came under fire, and the airstrikes targeted the Afghan forces, who had been firing machine guns.

Despite all the talk of self defense and US troops being “under effective fire,” officials insist not a single US casualty occurred. US officials expressed “regret” for the deaths of Afghan partners.

SOURCE: ANTIWAR.COM
By Jason Ditz
For the second time in less than a month, US forces carried out airstrikes “in self defense” in Afghanistan, only to discover that they were actually attacking Afghan security forces. The Wednesday strike ended up wiping out an entire unit, though officials have yet to disclose the exact number of deaths, beyond it apparently being everyone present.

The previous attack saw US ground troops believing they were under fire, and the warplanes attacking police, killing 18. In this case, too, US officials said they believed the troops came under fire, and the airstrikes targeted the Afghan forces, who had been firing machine guns.

Despite all the talk of self defense and US troops being “under effective fire,” officials insist not a single US casualty occurred. US officials expressed “regret” for the deaths of Afghan partners.

Authored by Danny Sjursen via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than seventeen years. Despite many years of effort and billions spent, the U.S. military is still suffering casualties in that remote land. In 2017, fourteen American soldiers died in Afghanistan — some, in fact, shot from behind by their supposed local allies. Already, through January 2019, two more American troopers have been killed. They were the 2,418th and 2,419th U.S. military deaths in the war since 2001.

None of this sacrifice has defeated the Taliban or staved off enemy military advances throughout the country over the last several years. In fact, there have been a number of spectacular Taliban successes and attacks of late. On August 21, 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s speech in the heavily fortified capital city of Kabul was interrupted by dozens of mortar rounds fired by the Taliban. It was no mere anecdotal anomaly.

The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than seventeen years. Despite many years of effort and billions spent, the U.S. military is still suffering casualties in that remote land. In 2017, fourteen American soldiers died in Afghanistan — some, in fact, shot from behind by their supposed local allies. Already, through January 2019, two more American troopers have been killed. They were the 2,418th and 2,419th U.S. military deaths in the war since 2001.

None of this sacrifice has defeated the Taliban or staved off enemy military advances throughout the country over the last several years. In fact, there have been a number of spectacular Taliban successes and attacks of late. On August 21, 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s speech in the heavily fortified capital city of Kabul was interrupted by dozens of mortar rounds fired by the Taliban. It was no mere anecdotal anomaly.

Australian police stormed a building belonging to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), as part of an ongoing investigation against stories from 2017 related to Australian forces involved in possible war crimes in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison tried to downplay the matter, though this was actually the second day of such raids against the reporter involved, while insisting that his government is “committed to press freedom.” He sought to avoid responsibility, however, saying that probe was actually started before he became premier. He also pointed out that ABC is a state-run outlet.

The 2017 articles in question were specifically related to the use of “unlawful killings” by Australian special forces. The warrant demanded drafts of the stories, access to reporter emails, and handwritten notes. Over 100 pages of documents were taken, and two USB drives.

It was 4am when Masih Ur-Rahman Mubarez’s wife Amina called, an unusually early time for their daily chat. When he picked up the phone, he could hear the panic in her voice.

The call ended with Masih saying he would call again when things had calmed. But at 9am, when he dialed his wife’s number, her phone was off. He tried again at 9.30am. Still off. Through the whole of that day and the next, he repeatedly called. But Amina’s phone remained off.

It took another day for him to the learn the truth. Relatives avoided his calls or gave vague replies to his questions, until finally his brother broke the news. “He tried to avoid telling me the whole story, but I insisted that he tell me the truth,” Masih recalled in a wavering voice. “He told me to have patience in God - no one is left.”

An airstrike on Masih’s house had killed his wife and all his seven children, alongside four young cousins. His youngest child was just four years old.

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA.COM
The Afghan Taliban is unlikely to call a ceasefire any time soon, the group's leader has indicated, even though the "doors of dialogue" with the United States to end the 18-year-long war in the country remain open.

In his annual message on Saturday, ahead of next week's Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Mullah Haibatullah Akhunzada pledged to continue fighting until the group's objectives were reached.

"No one should expect us to pour cold water on the heated battlefronts of Jihad or forget our 40-year sacrifices before reaching our objectives," he said in the message, adding that the Taliban aimed for "an end to the occupation and establishment of an Islamic system".

His statement comes days after a Taliban official said that "decent progress" had been made during talks with a group of senior Afghan politicians in Moscow.

A group of Afghan politicians led by former President Hamid Karzai and a 14-member Taliban team led by the co-founder of the group Abdul Ghani Baradar sat for the second day in Moscow to discuss the Afghan peace, but behind the closed doors.

The group rejected the calls for a ceasefire which was the main demand by Afghan politicians – who publicly raised the demand at a ceremony in Moscow on the centenary of Afghanistan-Russia diplomatic ties on Tuesday, May 28.

Sources said the second day of the meeting was also focused on peace and pressuring the Taliban to agree on a ceasefire with the Taliban – at least in the upcoming Eid al-Fitr.

Backing their deputy leader’s stance, a Taliban spokesman told reporters on Wednesday that ceasefire is not possible in presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan – who are helping the Afghan forces in their fight against the Taliban and other insurgent groups since 2001.

The alleged attack comes days after the Taliban targeted a US convoy in north-eastern Afghanistan, killing three soldiers.

Taliban* militants have claimed they shot down a US B-52 heavy bomber, Syrian news site Muraselon reports.

The incident purportedly took place when the aircraft was departing from the Shawrab Airbase in southern Afghanistan in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

"Mujaheddin (a militia fighter) of the Islamic Emirate targeted a US B-52 bomber with heavy weapons today early morning in Lar area in the Washir district of Helmand Province," a spokesman for the Taliban was quoted as saying.

The B-52 is said to have crashed after the strike, killing all of its crew. Both Afghan and US authorities are yet to comment on the matter.

Afghan politicians are set to attend a two-day meeting with the Taliban in Moscow this week, officials confirmed Monday, as fighting continues to rage in Afghanistan amid troubled peace talks between the US and the militants.

The meeting -- set to run the 28th and 29th of May -- will mark the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Russia and Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said a 14-member delegation was heading to Moscow, led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the group's top political leader.

Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban's chief negotiator and former deputy minister of foreign affairs, will also attend, Mujahid said in a statement.

From the Afghan political establishment, former president Hamid Karzai is set to make an appearance, with his spokesman Yousof Saha suggesting the Afghan and Taliban delegations might meet on the sidelines for informal talks, but he noted nothing was guaranteed.

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE
In keeping with their spectacular reputation of violating privacy and rigging elections, Facebook has said that it removed "hundreds of accounts" from Facebook and Instagram that were used to influence elections in Africa, according to CNN. Only it wasn't Russia who was behind this latest intervention, but Israel.
Archimedes Group, an Israeli company, reportedly spent more than $800,000 in advertising (far more than the Kremlin allegedly spent on its "ad campaign" to crush Hillary Clinton and get Trump elected) and ran accounts that had nearly 3 million followers, for the purpose of targeting African elections. The group primarily targeted Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia.

For perspective, the $800,000 reportedly spent by the group compares to the $100,000 that has been claimed by the U.S. mainstream media to have been spent for ‘Russian bots’ used to allegedly sway the 2016 US presidential election, according to RT.

US airstrikes killed 17 Afghan police officers and wounded 14 others due to a "miscommunication" while fighting with Taliban forces, according to Stars and Stripes, citing Afghan officials.

A US airstrike conducted Thursday in Afghanistan killed more than a dozen local policemen and wounded just as many.

When a firefight broke out between the Taliban and the local police force after the latter attempted to take down a Taliban flag in southern Helmand province, Afghan forces on the ground called in an airstrike, telling the US that the area was clear of friendlies, Stars and Stripes reported, citing Resolute Support.

Unfortunately, they were not, and a tragic accident resulted," the NATO mission in Afghanistan explained in its statement. "We're examining the miscommunication to ensure it is not repeated. We regret this tragic loss of life of our partners and are committed to improvement every day with every mission."

The longest war in U.S. history has cost 2400 American lives and nearly a trillion dollars. Still, the government in Washington conceals the truth and most of the populace yawns. By now there should be no doubt that America has lost the battle for Afghanistan, placing it in good company with the British and Soviet empires that failed to conquer that famously xenophobic country. I just wish the Trump administration – as self-touting “truth-tellers” – would admit it. Seriously, a public acceptance of defeat would be strangely refreshing. But don’t count on it!

Trump and company have a better idea. They’ll just stop telling the American people anything about how this perpetual war is going. Seriously, the powers that be have taken just about all the relevant, measurable data on the war and either stopped tracking it or deemed it classified. How’s that for some Orwellian political spin?

An Afghan journalist and political advisor, who was vocal about women’s rights in the country, has been gunned down in broad daylight, just days after saying she believed her life was in danger.

Mena Mangal was shot dead on Saturday morning in a public place while she was on her way to work in the capital city of Kabul.

The French prosecutor on Friday said it had opened a preliminary investigation into a suspected file assembled by Bayer’s seed maker Monsanto to influence various personalities in France.

The probe was opened after a complaint was filed by daily newspaper Le Monde.

According to Le Monde and other French media, Monsanto built up a file of some 200 names that includes journalists and law makers in the hope of influencing their positions on pesticides.

The file, Le Monde reports, dates from 2016 and was leaked by U.S public relations and marketing agency FleishmanHillard.

Officials at Bayer were not immediately available for comment.

Despite ongoing talks between Washington and the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan, US forces and their Afghan allies have killed more civilians than all insurgent groups combined so far this year.

The ongoing talks between the US Trump administration and the Afghan Taliban are being hyped as a significant step towards ending the 17-year war in Afghanistan.

In truth, though, the talks, if successful, may end up only ending one of the many wars currently being fought in the country. The US-led intervention has passed its 17th year, but conflict and chaos in Afghanistan have been taking place for the past 40 years.

A senior official from Iran's Foreign Ministry has said millions of Afghan refugees will be expelled from Iran if the sanctions on Tehran are increased.

According to Iranian officials, more than three million Afghan refugees are living in Iran with over two million of them working in that country.

In an interview with Iran’s IRNA news agency, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Sayed Abbas Araghchi said Iran would ask the Afghan refugees to go home if sanctions are increased, adding that the migrants annually send three to five billion Euros to Afghanistan.

Araghchi said: “468,000 Afghan students are getting education freely in Iranian schools and every student costs 600 Euros on an average basis.”

Speaking to the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Wednesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joe Dunford insisted that “I don’t think anybody would want to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan or the broader Middle East more than me.” He then went on to oppose withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan.

18 years into the US occupation of Afghanistan, the situation on the ground is worse than ever. Diplomatic progress, however, is offering the possibility that the US could negotiate some sort of settlement to get them out of the country within a real, measurable amount of time.

That’s not sitting well with Dunford, who insists the US needs to keep ground troops in Afghanistan “as long as an insurgency continues.” He added that there are still 20 extremist groups in Afghanistan.

Taliban officials have issued an English-language statement this weekend related to the ongoing Doha talks with a US delegation. They report that they and the US are getting closer on a timetable for the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan.

During this most recent round of talks, they reported that the US and Taliban delegations both offered new proposals for a drawdown of troops, and that the differences at this point simply center on how quickly this will happen.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad didn’t elaborate on the talks themselves, but simply continued to back Afghan government calls for “all sides” to disarm quickly to end the war. All sides likely doesn’t mean the US.

A program to train Afghan attack pilots in the United States has been disbanded after nearly half of the airmen went AWOL in Texas.

It has been revealed that more than 40 percent of Afghan Air Force students enrolled in the program went absent without leave in the middle of training.

The attack pilots were being trained to fly the AC-208 Combat Caravan, a light attack combat aircraft, according to a quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

Only one class graduated from the US-based program. The students that did not go AWOL were pulled back to Afghanistan to complete their training.

Afghanistan’s grand tribal council named Loya Jirga wants the United States to immediately pull out its forces from the war-torn country, says a commentator.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani opened the grand peace assembly, known as a Loya Jirga, under a huge tent in central Kabul on Monday, with some 3,200 tribal elders as well as senior community and religious figures from all over the country in attendance. The four-day negotiations were aimed at finding ways to strike a peace deal with the Taliban militant group.

Kevin Barrett, author and Middle East expert, told Press TV on Friday that the Afghan people do not want to live under US military occupation, because they have not allowed foreigners to occupy their country in the course of history.

“People in Afghanistan have pride and historically they haven’t allowed their country to be occupied without fierce resistance and today they’ve actually defeated the world’s self-proclaimed sole superpower,” Barrett argued.

It should come as no surprise to most that the United States' over 18-year long war in Afghanistan is a continual nightmare wrought with endless difficulties, earning America's lengthy post 9/11 quagmire the moniker of "the forever war".

But a new Pentagon inspector general report has confirmed the situation to be even worse than commonly perceived: the war to roll back the Taliban is not merely stalled, but there's indicators suggesting jihadist insurgents are actually winning. The report finds Afghan national forces backed by the US have seen a 31% surge in casualties in recent months.

Casualties among Afghan National Defense and Security Forces rose 31 percent from December 2018 to February 2019 over the same period a year earlier, while troop levels fell short again of authorized strength for the first quarter of this year.

The International Criminal Court recently delivered a shock ruling.

The ICC’s pre-trial judges decided unanimously against opening an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan.

Opening an investigation would not serve the “interests of justice,” according to the judges.

Yet is hard to see how the judges have themselves served the interests of justice. They have denied any redress to victims of atrocities.

The decision was made despite the clear findings of an assessment by Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s chief prosecutor. She concluded there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that war crimes had been committed by the US military, the CIA, the Taliban and Afghan state forces.

Having long insisted that data on control of Afghan territory was “the metric that’s most telling in a counterinsurgency,” the Pentagon has informed the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that they will no longer be keeping track of that at all, and won’t be providing that data to SIGAR.

SIGAR John Sipko was critical of the move, saying that the Pentagon was providing even less information for the American taxpayers to “gauge whether their investment in Afghanistan is a success.”

After nearly two decades of bloodshed, meaningful progress is finally being made towards a conclusion of the war in Afghanistan. Negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar have achieved an uncommon consistency. On the domestic front, a bipartisan resolution matching the Taliban’s proposed timeline has emerged in the U.S. Senate. The main voices opposing peace originate from within the Pentagon and the Afghan National Unity Government. In a departure from their constitutionally mandated subordinate role, top generals are calling for yet another extension on murky grounds. Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has also urged against a timely withdraw, claiming that the government in Kabul lacks the strength required for independence. Whether by incompetence or corruption, neither contingent should have the credibility to dictate the plan for removing U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

The Following text is Section 5 of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,
by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

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Contents

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO war to demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11. Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty

Dozens of seats remain empty in the newly inaugurated parliament amid allegations of rigging and irregularities.

Afghanistan will convene on Monday a rare ‘loya jirga’ – a meeting for delegates from across the country to discuss US efforts to forge a peace deal with the Taliban. More than 2,000 people have been invited to gather amid tight security for four days of debate under a large tent in Kabul, AFP reported. A loya jirga, or ‘grand assembly’ in Pashto, is traditionally comprised of Afghan elders.

The US has spent $1.5m (£1.15m) a day since 2001 fighting the opium war in Afghanistan. So why is business still booming?

For the first time in recorded history, the U.S. and the Afghan government, whose forces are trained by Americans, killed more civilians than did the Taliban in the first quarter of 2019, according to a United Nations report. Increased bombing campaigns by the U.S. and increasingly reckless search operations by pro-government forces have fueled the trend reversal.

While the U.S. war in Afghanistan was bloodiest in its infancy, little data is available until 2009, when the UN started keeping track of civilian casualties and the U.S. started accounting for the bombs and munitions it drops on the country.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says it is “concerned” with “significant increases in civilian casualties from aerial and search operations, which drove an overall increase in civilian casualties by Pro-Government Forces.”

A girls’ school was destroyed in an attack by unknown armed men in Farah province in the west of Afghanistan on Monday night, local officials confirmed.

Another school in the province was destroyed on Sunday night.

The schools were destroyed by use of explosives, the head of Education Department Mohammad Azimi said.

This comes after another girl’s school named Benafsha Girls High School was burned down by unknown armed men on Sunday night in Tosak village on the outskirt of the city.

Farah education department head Mohammad Azimi said the unknown armed men entered Nawdeh Girl’s High School on Monday night and replaced explosives devices inside the building and then exploded the devices.

According to Azimi, the school building completely has been destroyed and all the facilities and books have been burned.

At least 2,000 girls were enrolled in the two schools, Azimi said.

Women will be included for the first time in the Taliban delegation to peace talks in Qatar this month, the movement's main spokesman said on April 15, ahead of the latest round of meetings aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.

For a group notorious for its strictly conservative attitude to women's rights, the move represents a step towards addressing demands that women be included in the talks, intended to lay the foundations for a future peace settlement.

The April 19-21 meeting in Doha will be between the Taliban and a delegation comprising prominent Afghans, including opposition politicians and civil society activists. It follows similar talks between the two sides in Moscow in February.

The non-Taliban delegation that was in Moscow could be expanded next week to include some government officials, but acting in their private capacities as the insurgents have refused to hold formal talks with Kabul.

Apr. 15, 2019 - 3:21 - Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) says he is highly suspicious of the Taliban’s desire for peace talks.

See, my book wasn’t aimed at cataloging the failures in Iraq per se, but in trying to make sure we didn’t do the same thing in Afghanistan. The initial title wasn’t We Meant Well, but Lessons for Afghanistan from the Reconstruction of Iraq. The early drafts were pretentious scholarly stuff, outlining our mistakes. Harvard Business School-like case studies. Maps. Footnotes. It would have sold maybe five copies, and so my editors encouraged me to add more funny parts. NPR’s Fresh Airactually added a laugh track to my interview. I figured I’d get the lessons across with humor more effectively anyway. In such situations, you have to think that way. You can’t believe that what you went through didn’t matter and keep getting out of bed every morning.

I now know officially that it did not matter. It was pointless. SIGAR shows I accomplished nothing.

U.S. president promises 'swift and vigorous response' to any attempt to charge Washington and its allies after court rejects investigation of possible American war crimes in Afghanistan