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News of Abdul Niazi’s death arrived in a chilling phone call. It was March 26, nearly the end of Ramadan, and his wife wanted to know when to expect her husband, a former U.S. military interpreter who lost both legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan and became one of Houston’s most well-known advocates for new Afghan migrants. It was almost time to break the day’s fast, recalled Niazi’s cousin, but he hadn’t returned home. So she called his cellphone. “I’m not your husband,” the man on the other end of the line said, according to Rizwanullah Niazi, Niazi’s cousin....

Time was running out for Mohammad Khalid Wardak, a high-profile Afghan national police officer who spent years working alongside the American military... After at least four attempts in as many days, the family finally was whisked away by helicopter Wednesday in a dramatic rescue — called Operation Promise Kept — carried out under cover of darkness by the U.S. military and its allies... He was widely known because of his position as police chief in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province and from television appearances, including one in which he challenged the Taliban to a fight, supporters said. Green said he was...

The Pentagon identified the U.S. service member killed in action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on Thursday as Spc. James A. Slape. The 23-year-old from Morehead City, N.C., died of injuries from an improvised explosive device, the Pentagon said in a statement. Slape was assigned to 60th Troop Command, North Carolina Army National Guard, Washington, N.C.

The Taliban has for days been fighting to gain control of Sangin, a key district of the Helmand province that U.S. Marines battled to secure during the war in Afghanistan. The Guardian reported that Taliban fighters stormed Afghan police headquarters in the district Monday morning, according to a western official, but were held off from taking control of the security building by an airstrike, likely launched by NATO. On Sunday, deputy governor of Helmand Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar, addressing Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, wrote on Facebook that Helmand was close to collapsing amid pressure from the Taliban. "I know that bringing...

Fall of strategic province could be 'death blow' to Afghan government WASHINGTON – A U.S. general has quietly returned to Washington to brief the White House about a Taliban surge threatening the survival of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan as a result of the withdrawal of U.S. troops, especially from strategic Helmand province, a U.S. military intelligence source in Afghanistan told Joseph Farah’s G2Bulletin. Army Gen. John F. Campbell rushed back to Washington this week without publicity to warn the White House that the Taliban is on the verge of taking over the entire Helmand province, the source said. “I...

Clinton could still become president after her email scandal, but a decorated Marine is being forced out over one classified report he sent to avert a disaster. No matter how much classified material is found in her personal email server, Hillary Clinton will no doubt continue campaigning to become our next president.Meanwhile, a decorated Marine officer who has deployed four times faces being discharged from the corps he loves because he used his personal email to send a single classified report as an urgent warning when lives were at stake.The stateside message from Marine Reserves Major Jason Brezler to Forward...

President Barack Obama marked a milestone Sunday on the way to one of the most important, controversial, and riskiest promises of his presidency: winding down the American-led coalition's combat role in Afghanistan in preparation for ending the long war there next year. American and British combat operations formally came to an end in Helmand Province, one of the bloodiest theaters in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and a primary focus of Obama's 2010 surge of tens of thousands of American reinforcements charged with beating back the revitalized insurgency. But there were no White House statements issued Sunday to commemorate...

Marine Attack Squadron loses eight Harrier jets in worst U.S. air loss in one day since the Vietnam War On Friday Sept. 14, at around 10.15 p.m. local time, a force of Taliban gunmen attacked Camp Bastion, in Helmand Province, the main strategic base in southwestern Afghanistan.About 15 insurgents (19 according to some reports), wearing U.S. Army uniforms, organized into three teams, breached the perimeter fence and launched an assault on the airfield, that includes the U.S. Camp Leatherneck and the UK’s Camp Bastion, where British royal Prince Harry, an AH-64 Apache pilot (initially believed to be the main target...

The Taliban beheaded 17 people, including two women, for attending a mixed-gender party where there was music and dancing, Afghan officials reported today. The decapitated bodies were abandoned at a roadside in southern Afghanistan, according to Mullah Sharafuddin, the governor of Kajaki district in Helmand province. All 17 bodies, including those of two women, were decapitated, but it was not clear if they had been shot first.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.Cpl. Christopher J. Boyd, 22, of Palatine, Ill., died Aug. 19 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, IMarine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

TALIBAN commanders have revealed that hundreds of insurgents have been trained in Iran to kill Nato forces in Afghanistan. The commanders said they had learnt to mount complex ambushes and lay improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been responsible for most of the deaths of British troops in Helmand province. The accounts of two commanders, in interviews with The Sunday Times, are the first descriptions of training of the Taliban in Iran. According to the commanders, Iranian officials paid them to attend three-month courses during the winter. They were smuggled across the border to the city of Zahidan, in southeast...

The high-profile arrest of a group of Pakistani militants in mid-April in the restive Afghan province of Helmand by the Afghan army and their subsequent handover to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for grilling exposed a jihadi network running to the heart of urban Pakistan. In the course of interrogation, the militants confessed to being recruited, trained and then launched into Helmand after spending some time in places such as the southern port city of Karachi and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. They also gave details of their Pakistani leaders and their activities, including how these leaders could...

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- U.S. Marines are crossing the sands of southern Afghanistan for the first time in years, providing a boost to a NATO coalition that is growing but still short on manpower. They hope to retake the 10 percent of Afghanistan the Taliban holds. Some of the Marines that make up the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit helped to tame a thriving insurgency in western Iraq. Some 3,500 newly arrived troops hope to move into regions of Afghanistan now controlled by the Taliban. The Marines are working alongside British forces in Helmand province _ the world's largest opium-poppy region...