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File picture of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. (Agence France-Presse) LAHORE: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted in an interview that Islamabad supported and trained groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir. The former army chief has also said that Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi enjoyed the status of heroes at that time. Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dunya News on Sunday, Mr Musharraf said, "In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir...At that time, Lashkar-e- Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported...

Taliban fighters aren't just making gains on the battlefield: They're also bleeding away a revenue source that is crucial for Afghanistan to pay for its military without US help. The Afghan government will earn about $30 million in 2015 from its mineral sector for the third straight year, far short of a previous projection of $1.5 billion, according to Mines and Petroleum Minister Daud Shah Saba. That's also a quarter of what smugglers -mostly linked to the Taliban and local warlords -earn annually selling rubies and emeralds, he said.

A former British stronghold in Helmand has fallen to the Taliban just 12 months after UK combat troops left the province and civilians are fleeing the nearby provincial capital, fearing insurgents will soon move on the town. The heavy fighting north west of Lashkar Gah and unravelling of security in areas UK troops fought bloody battles to secure comes days before the first anniversary of Britain’s withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan. The assault also comes only three weeks after the Taliban captured the northern city of Kunduz in their greatest military victory since 2001. A Western official said Lashkar...

Donald Trump is right: America's leaders are stupid. They're nothing but a bunch of losers. Well, at least when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That's the only conclusion to be reached following two big developments this week. The first was President Barack Obama's announcement that the United States will decelerate its military drawdown from Afghanistan. Instead of preserving only a small force of about 1,000 troops, the new plan will station 9,800 in the country until 2016 and 5,500 into 2017. Their mission will be limited to training Afghan forces and supporting counterterrorism operations. This will help promote, in...

Israeli Ambassador: (Despite Obama’s Requests) Israel Will Not Turn Over Christian Holy Sites to Radical Islam [ Full title ]. In May 2011 Barack Obama urged Israel to hand over half of Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall, The Temple Mount, Old Jerusalem, and the tomb of Jesus Christ to the Hamas-Fatah terrorist organizations. ... In December 2013, Barack Obama again urged Israel to hand over ancient Christian and Jewish holy sites to Islamist terrorists. ... On Friday – Palestinian terrorists set fire to Joseph’s Tomb – a Jewish holy site. ... Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer ... warned America...

SAR SHAHI, AFGHANISTAN – When the Islamic State fighters seized the Mahmand Valley, they poured pepper into the wounds of their enemies, said villagers. Then, they seared their hands in vats of boiling oil. A group of villagers was blindfolded, tortured and blown apart with explosives buried underneath them. “They pulled out my brother’s teeth before they forced him to sit on the bombs,” recalled Malik Namos, a tribal elder who escaped the valley along with thousands of other villagers. “They are more vicious than the Taliban, than any group we have seen.” At war for more than three decades,...

The United States will halt its military withdrawal from Afghanistan and instead keep thousands of troops in the country through the end of President Obama’s term in 2017, Mr. Obama will announce on Thursday, prolonging the American role in a war that has now stretched on for 14 years. The current American force in Afghanistan of 9,800 troops will remain in place through most of 2016 under the Obama administration’s revised plans, before dropping to about 5,500 at the end of next year or in early 2017, senior administration officials said. Some of the troops will continue to train and...

SORKHROAD, Afghanistan — At least three times a week, Malaika hikes up the mountain, past mulberry and pine trees, to a clearing where she can get cellphone reception. She calls her family to reassure them that the Islamic State fighters have not come for her yet. Below, her village — Bagh, in the Maamand Valley in eastern Afghanistan — has been gutted by the Islamic State militants who overran it three months ago. Most of the houses have been looted, burned or simply taken over by the fighters, and the 80 or so families that lived there have been forced...

New data from the United Nations on the military advances by a resurgent Taliban is alarming for what it says about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan — and what it suggests about the American military’s honesty about what is happening there.The fall of Kunduz two weeks ago was a startling sign of how the Taliban has reasserted itself, wresting a northern city from the control of the NATO-trained Afghan Security Forces, who are not doing a great job of showing they are up to defending their country. The United Nations data, reported by The Times on Monday and backed...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban insurgency has spread through more of Afghanistan than at any point since 2001, according to data compiled by the United Nations as well as interviews with numerous local officials in areas under threat. In addition, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan over the past two weeks has evacuated four of its 13 provincial offices around the country — the most it has ever done for security reasons — according to local officials in the affected areas. The data, compiled in early September — even before the latest surge in violence in northern Afghanistan —...

Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl could have had a desk waiting for him in the Pentagon in the summer of 2014 when the Army asked him to figure out why Bowe Bergdahl deserted his combat outpost in Afghanistan. Dahl passed on the offer. He thought he had a better chance of finding the truth by taking his work back to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where he was the deputy commanding general of its I Corps headquarters. That decision was the first step in a two-month investigation at JBLM during which he interviewed 57 people and pulled together a team of 22 soldiers...

<p>Casualties were reported in the explosion, which rocked central Kabul at around 9:15 a.m. local time, the source said.</p> <p>"A few civilians were injured, but we do not have any reports of any death," Afghan ministry of interior spokesperson Najib Danish said.</p>

<p>The attorney defending Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl says that the officer who presided over his Article 32 hearing last month is going to recommend that he face a lower-level court martial, thus sparing him a long prison sentence.</p> <p>An Army officer is recommending that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a lower-level court martial and be spared the possibility of jail time for leaving his post in Afghanistan, his lawyer said Saturday.</p>

A retired military colonel, now a Fox News analyst, has dropped a bombshell in the case of Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant held for five years by the Taliban who is charged with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy. Retired Col. David Hunt says Bergdahl actually joined the Taliban, and recordings prove it. Further, he notes the U.S. government has failed to make use of that evidence in the case against Bergdahl, who was returned to the U.S. in a stunning trade for five top terrorists held at Guantanamo. Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, Hunt said the...

He has also benefited from a powerful alliance with the Pakistani military spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, the original sponsor of the Afghan Taliban insurgency. ...snip... Mullah Mansour, a stout man believed to be just under 50, does not, unlike his famously reclusive predecessor, live in hiding. His circumstances are not those of a jihadist leader living a fugitive existence, fearing drone strikes and avoiding cellphones in case they are tracked — in fact, one person who knows him says the Taliban leader owns a cellphone company. Some of the time, he lives in a southern neighborhood of Quetta, Pakistan, known...

The death toll has climbed to 22 following an airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that struck a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders Saturday. Ten of those killed were patients, including three children, according to Doctors Without Borders/Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF). The other 12 were staff members, said MSF. In a statement, the coalition in Afghanistan acknowledged that U.S. forces conducted an airstrike in Kunduz early Saturday at 2:15 a.m. local time "against insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. service members advising and assisting Afghan Security Forces in the city of Kunduz. The strike was conducted in the vicinity of...

KABUL — The acting governor of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province said Sunday that Taliban fighters had been routinely firing “small and heavy” weapons from the grounds of a local hospital before it was apparently hit by a U.S. airstrike over the weekend. In an interview, Hamdullah Danishi said the Doctors Without Borders compound was “a Taliban base” that was being used to plot and carry out attacks across the provincial capital, Kunduz city. “The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban,” Danishi said. “The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there. We tolerated their firing...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Confusion reigned in the wake of the deadly bombing Saturday of a hospital compound in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz that killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens more. It remains unclear exactly who bombed the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders and the international medical charity has demanded an investigation into the incident.Doctors Without Borders said that "all indications" pointed to the international military coalition as responsible for the bombing and called for an independent investigation. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said an inquiry was underway into whether the carnage at the clinic...

The Taliban Friday claimed to have shot down a C-130 military transport plane in eastern Afghanistan, with NATO confirming that 11 people including six US soldiers were killed in the crash. NATO did not confirm the cause of the crash but it comes as Afghan forces -- backed by NATO special forces and US air support -- pushed into the centre of the northern city of Kunduz which was captured by the Taliban on Monday. "Our mujahideen have shot down a four-engine US aircraft in Jalalabad," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter. "Based on credible information 15 invading forces...

The Taliban have seized the Bala Hisar fortress in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. The fighters achieved the victory, despite NATO airstrikes and government efforts. More than 40 people died and 330 were injured in the fighting, including civilians. Many others have fled from the provincial capital. This is the biggest coup for the Taliban since 2001, led by the group’s new leader Mullah Mansour. They have emptied safe deposit boxes at banks, seized weapons and vehicles, and released prisoners. It was also a public relations victory. Kunduz is one of Afghanistan’s richest cities. It is also a key...