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Friday, 24 March 2017 Text size A A A Russia is “perhaps” supplying the Taliban as they fight US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, a top US general said Thursday. General Curtis Scaparrotti, NATO’s supreme allied commander who also heads the US military’s European Command, told lawmakers he had seen Russian influence expand in multiple regions, including in Afghanistan. “I have seen the influence of Russia of late – an increased influence – in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban,” Scaparrotti told the Senate Armed Services Committee, without elaborating. NATO troops have been fighting in Afghanistan...

America’s 16-years in Afghanistan has so far resulted in 2,216 dead soldiers, 20,049 casualties, and an estimated $800 billion in direct war costs -- not including veterans’ health and pension payments that could reach $400 billion before it’s all over. Add another $100 billion of USAID reconstruction costs, which is more than the cost of the Marshall Plan to rebuild western Europe, adjusted for inflation, and you’re well over a trillion dollars. The Pentagon still has 8,400 troops in place, a figure Defense Secretary James Mattis may alter, which is why it’s especially troubling that Russia has decided to flex...

The top U.S. general in Europe told lawmakers Thursday that Russia and the Taliban are growing increasingly close, suggesting that the Kremlin might even be supplying the insurgent group. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, did not elaborate to the Senate Armed Services Committee on what type of equipment the Taliban might have received or when.

A former CIA Station Chief warned that the "failure" of Pakistan would have implications for the world. Pakistan is probably the "most dangerous country" for the world, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official has said, citing the potential dangers emanating from its failing economy, rampant terrorism and one of fastest growing nuclear arsenal. Kevin Hulbert, a former CIA Station Chief in Islamabad, warned that the "failure" of Pakistan would have implications for the world. Pakistan is like the bank that is "too big to fail", or "too big to allow to fail" more appropriately, because allowing the bank to...

Members of the mainstream media were left fuming this afternoon after President Trump refused to call on any of their organizations for the third straight press conference. Yet many of these same news organizations have likened Trump to the Taliban and Adolf Hitler, floated false rumors about his use of a Russian prostitute, and accused his administration of being pro-slavery. After Trump avoided calling on MSNBC during today's presser with Benjamin Netanyahu, MSNBC’s Peter Alexander complained that the conservative journalists he did call on didn’t ask “real questions” like he would have. “What was striking," Alexander said, was that "President...

Some would call this pure Karma. Kamal Khan, who was described as one of the Taliban’s leading experts on constructing road side bombs and explosives experienced poetic justice when a bomb he was making in Afghanistan detonated too early, killing himself and his four sons. Khan was making explosives in his home, which have been frequently used to attack government security personnel and international troops in Afghanistan.

China, Pakistan, and Russia highlighted their concern for the growing influence of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Afghanistan during a meeting last month hosted by Russia for the representatives from the three countries. The three countries agreed upon “a flexible approach to remove certain [Taliban] figures from [United Nations] sanctions lists as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement.” The three states underscored their concern “about the rising activity in the country [Afghanistan] of extremist groups, including the Afghan branch of IS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]” and underlined that Taliban...

(CNN)Some time in May 2014, Paul Overby, an American writer in his 70's, disappeared as he was traveling between Khost in Afghanistan and North Waziristan in Pakistan -- a region rife with the Taliban and terror groups such as al Qaeda. He has not been heard from since. On Wednesday, his wife went public for the first time with his disappearance, providing a statement to CNN and other media outlets. . . Overby's wife, who asked not to be identified by name, last heard from her husband on May 16, 2014, as he was preparing to cross the border into...

A new video from the Taliban features Canadian Joshua Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped while hiking through Afghanistan in 2012.“My children have seen their mother defiled,” she added ominously, as the children sat in Boyle’s lap. Also ominous: she referred to the boys as her “surviving children.” “They want money, power, friends. You must give them these things before progress can be made,” she said of her captors in the Haqqani Network, a notorious hostage-taking criminal gang allied with the Taliban. Reuters explains that the “friends” she referred to are three senior Haqqani members held...

Afghan Senate members have certified the existence of documents affirming that Taliban collected endorsements from both Iran and Russia. Indeed, Taliban members are located in the cities of Mashhad, Yazd and Kerman in Iran. They often travel to and fro between the two countries, according to locals at the border of Afghanistan. The Iranian Foreign Ministry denied these reports. A number of deputies of the Council of elders of Afghanistan, advocated that: “Moscow supplied the Taliban with ammunition in order to restrain the widening influence of ISIS and its affiliated groups in Afghanistan and preclude threats against the Central Asian...

Fifteen years, half a trillion dollars and 150,000 lives since going to war, the United States is trying to extricate itself from Afghanistan. Afghans are being left to fight their own fight. A surging Taliban insurgency, meanwhile, is flush with a new inflow of money. With their nation’s future at stake, Afghan leaders have renewed a plea to one power that may hold the key to whether their country can cling to democracy or succumbs to the Taliban. But that power is not the United States. It is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is critical because of its unique position in...

<p>In the aftermath of the Raymond Davis and bin Laden affairs, General James Mattis was key in maintaining ties with top Pakistani military leadership.</p> <p>New Delhi: The next US secretary of defence was the Obama administration's main man to keep a line open and bring ties with the top Pakistani military leadership back on an even keel in the dark days following the arrest of a CIA contractor and the killing of Osama bin Laden.</p>

U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the former prisoner of war who’s accused of endangering comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan, is asking President Barack Obama to pardon him before leaving office. White House and Justice Department officials on Saturday said Bergdahl had submitted copies of the clemency request seeking leniency. If granted by Obama, it would allow Bergdahl to avert a court-martial trial scheduled for April where he faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the latter of which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. …

BARF ALERT! Video at link.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has suggested the US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. An investigation would expose US forces to ICC scrutiny for the first time. Delivering her annual report to members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide “imminently” whether to ask judges for permission to launch a full-blown investigation as to whether US military forces and CIA operatives may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel or violent” interrogation of detainees. Bensouda said the Taliban, Afghan government forces and US...

A powerful Taliban truck bomb struck the German consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif late on Thursday, killing at least two people and wounding more than 100 others, officials said. “The suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into the wall of the German consulate in the city,” said local police chief Sayed Kamal Sadat. The Taliban called it a “revenge attack” for a US airstrike in the volatile province of Kunduz earlier this month that left up to 32 civilians dead. …

Democratic Party Conducts Outreach through Leader of Terrorist Group Debbie Wasserman Schultz and company's disturbing embrace of radical Islam. December 7, 2015 Joe Kaufman In a push to do outreach to the local Muslim community, the Florida Democratic Party has officially recognized the American Muslim Democratic Caucus (AMDC), a group based in South Florida with members around the state. While this might look innocuous on its face, AMDC is headed by a woman, Ghazala Salam, who is the leader of a terrorist organization and has deep ties to various radical Islamic institutions. Salam is the Community and Government Relations...

Really not much else to say. It's Afghanistan

Anyone know what's going on with the Taliban five? Most recent "press" is over a year old.

A 16-YEAR-OLD Christian boy faces the death penalty after he was accused of insulting Islam in a Facebook post. The boy has been arrested and charged with blasphemy after a photo of the Kaaba in Mecca, one of the holiest sites in Islam, appeared on his profile. A Muslim man told police the image, which was part of an alleged derogatory post against Islam on the boy’s profile, was insulting and sacrilegious. The black cube-shape is built around an ancient stone at the centre of Islam’s most sacred mosque Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Locals reportedly claimed the image...