AT-KABUL: Former President, Hamid Karzai was extremely saddened over the killing Avtar Singh Khalsa, representative of the country’s Sikh community. Singh was killed along several other Sikhs Sunday when a suicide bomber blew himself up among a gathering of Sikhs in Jalalabad city, the provincial capital of Nangarhar. Singh was …
Read More »Attack against minority Sikhs ‘a big crime’; Abdullah
AT-KABUL: Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, condemned attack against the Sikh community in Jalalabad as “a big crime”. A suicide bomber targeted a group of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus on Sunday in Jalalabad city, the provincial capital of Nangarhar. Around 19 people were killed in the attack, 13 of whom were …
Read More »Cessation of war in outsiders’ hands: MPs
AT-KABUL: A number of parliamentarians say the decision to put an end to the ongoing war in Afghanistan lies in the hands of outsiders. Members of Wolesi Jirga during a Monday session said the current conflict is not an Afghan war and that eight insurgent groups hailing from several countries …
Read More »Violence spreads in Jawzjan as Taliban overrun four villages
AT-KABUL: The Taliban have overrun four villages in Faizabad district of Jawzjan province, local authorities said Monday, as conflict is escalating in the tumultuous northern region. The villages of Garjak, Shishakhana, Turkmania, Shirabad, and Khairabad are among the collapsed ones. The Shibighan-Balkh Highway would be closed to traffic if no …
Read More »Abdullah against ‘safe zone’ blueprint
AT-KABUL: As the spectre of ceding the Taliban autonomous regions in the south as part of a ploy to reconcile the unruly faction is gaining traction, the Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has delivered a scathing critique over likely so-called safe zones, which he argued would unleash irreversible consequences as insurgent …
Read More »Anti-polio drive begins; Unrest prevents vaccination of one million children
By Farhad Naibkhel-KABUL: The Ministry of Public Health on Monday announced the launch of a campaign to administer polio vaccines to children countrywide, amid fears anti-polio workers may not reach out to over one million children due to widespread unrest. “In each polio vaccination drive, MoPH targets about 6.5 million …
Read More »Don’t beg for peace, dismantle terrorists instead; Senators
AT-KABUL: As full-fledged efforts of the government and its allies are underway to resuscitate an ailing reconciliation initiative, a handful of senators on Saturday heaped scorns on what they called the “policy of begging for peace” which would prove counterproductive, saying that stringent measures to dismantle terrorist networks were more …
Read More »Tensions high as gov’t covertly poised to prolong tenure
AT-KABUL: The Afghan government and the United States are making systematic arrangements to prolong tenure of the current government of national unity through a Constitutional Loya Jirga. Political analysts believe that the government neither has the intention of neither holding transparent elections nor bringing peace; and that elections are engineered …
Read More »Gen. Raziq says encouraging Quetta Shura for peace talks
AT-KABUL: Southern Kandahar’s Police Chief Gen. Abdul Raziq has claimed that he had recently participated in talks with Taliban’s Quetta Council leaders and is encouraging them to contemplate entering peace talks with the Afghan government. And according to Gen. Raziq, almost half of the Taliban leaders representing the Quetta Shura …
Read More »ICG supportive of Afghanistan rapprochement with Taliban
AT-KABUL: An international conglomerate for development assistance has lent support to the Afghan government’s continued efforts for rapprochement with the Taliban group. The members of International Contact Group (ICG) in a meeting in Azerbaijan have described truce overture of the Afghan government as a ‘bold step’ which defines commitments of …
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