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Kenneth Timmerman, writing in The New York Post, breaks open another shocking chapter in the Benghazi scandal. The Obama administration isn’t only giving the Taliban back its commanders — it’s giving them weapons... Miliary records and sources reveal that on July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile. The helicopter and all aboard survived the attack as it was able to crash land. But what had hit the Chinook?

At least 200 Taliban fighters crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan and killed more than 25 soldiers and police, Pakistan's military says. The fighters launched an early morning attack on seven military checkpoints in north-west Chitral district. The military said its troops fought off the attackers, killing 20 of them while the rest fled back into Afghanistan. It is the latest in a series of cross-border raids that have raised tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In its statement, the Pakistani military blamed the attack on Pakistan and Afghan Taliban-linked fighters who have sought refuge in the Kunar and Nuristan provinces of...

Note: Video and photos included. "Pictures of the 'White Taliban' in Kunar" By BILL ROGGIO May 17, 2010 3:57 PM SNIPPET: "Via SpyTalk comes the report of a Western-looking man dressed in Western clothes, milling around in a group of Taliban fighters in Kunar province, Afghanistan. The video (above, for as long as it stays up) was produced by Al Emara, the Taliban's propaganda arm, and released on jihadist forums over the weekend. The video also has plenty of footage of the Taliban's assault on Combat Outpost Keating in the Kamdesh district in Kunar province. Interestingly enough, the Sunday Times...

SNIPPET: "The US military targeted a Taliban commander in eastern Afghanistan who was behind the kidnapping of a Norwegian journalist in November. The Taliban commander, who is known as Haji Mohammad Dawran Safi or Qari Dawat, was the target of a November 26 airstrike in the eastern province of Kunar. Qari Dawat "is known for attacking innocent civilians in the Kunar region, as well as international forces and bases," the US military noted in a press release on Nov. 27, one day after the strike. Qari Dawat was not named, however. An Afghan Police commander confirmed the airstrike and said...

Four Marines died yesterday in Afghanistan when the Taliban laid a trap: Four U.S. Marines died Tuesday when they walked into a well-laid ambush by insurgents in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province. Seven Afghan troops and an interpreter for the Marine commander also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle, which lasted seven hours. Three American service members and 14 Afghan security force members were wounded. It was the largest number of American military trainers to die in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. The battle took place around the remote hamlet of Gangigal, in a valley about...

Stop bombing us: Osama isn’t here, says Pakistan Christina Lamb in Karachi Osama bin Laden and the top Al-Qaeda leadership are not in Pakistan, making US missile attacks against them futile, according to the country’s interior minister. “If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are searching.” He added: “According to our information Osama is in...

Joint al Qaeda and Taliban force behind Kunar base attack By Bill RoggioJuly 14, 2008 9:03 PM Kunar provincial map. Click to view. Yesterday's deadly complex attack on a joint US and Afghan outpost in Kunar province was carried out by a large, mixed force of Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied extremist groups operating eastern Afghanistan. Sunday's assault occurred just three days after 45 US soldiers, likely from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and 25 Afghan troops established a new combat outpost in the town of Wanat. The troops had little time to learn the lay of the land, establish local...

The US military has released footage from a unmanned aerial vehicle detailing the controversial June 10 battle against Taliban forces right on the Afghan-Pakistani border. The US military maintains it fired at Taliban forces, while the Pakistani government continues to maintain US airstrikes targeted an outpost manned by the Frontier Corps and killed Pakistani paramilitary troops. The US military said the clash began in Kunar province, less than 200 yards from the Pakistani border near the Garparai checkpoint. The fighting, which lasted for three hours, moved across the border as US warplanes pursued the Taliban as their retreated into Pakistan's...

The Afghan National Army and ISAF soldiers successfully repelled a complex improvised explosive device ambush at approximately 9 a.m. today in Kunar Province. Acting on credible intelligence that insurgents were planning a complex ambush on an ISAF vehicle patrol in the Korengal valley, ...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Fierce fighting broke out around Afghanistan on Friday, with battles in three separate regions killing more than 100 militants, part of a cycle of rapidly rising violence five years into the U.S.-led effort to defeat the Taliban. The governor of northeastern Kunar province said villagers were claiming that airstrikes had killed dozens of civilians, though he said he could not confirm the report. The fighting — in the south, west and northeast — continues a trend of sharply rising bloodshed the last five weeks, among the deadliest periods here since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion More than 1,000...

4 U.S. troops killed in clashes in Afghanistan Updated Sat. Aug. 19 2006 12:55 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff Four U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate gun battles in Afghanistan on Saturday. In the first attack, three American soldiers were killed in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan during an exchange of gunfire with suspected Taliban insurgents, said U.S. army spokesman Col. Tom Collins. There was no word on whether there were casualties among the enemy fighters. In another clash Saturday, an American and an Afghan soldier were killed in combat in the Cheno district of the southern province of...

PESHAWAR, Aug 18: A son-in-law of Al Qaeda No 2 Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights and he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, credible sources told Dawn. “The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri’s son-in-law,” said the sources who did not want to be named. “He is the guy being looked for,” they added. Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them was reported to have been killed in a...

Islamabad - Pakistan has informed US-led coalition forces that an al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners is based in eastern Afghanistan, security officials said on Friday. The senior Pakistani officials said the unnamed al-Qaeda member was based in Afghanistan's volatile eastern province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan's militant-infested north-western tribal areas. The information came from the interrogation of Rashid Rauf, a Briton whose arrest by Pakistani agents in early August allegedly led to the uncovering of the conspiracy to bomb US-bound planes, they said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not identify the...

OPERATION MOUNTAIN LION ROARS INTO KORENGAL VALLEY Release Date: 5/8/2006 Release Number: 06-05-08PJ Description: KORENGAL VALLEY, Afghanistan – Afghan National Army and Coalition forces recently stormed into the enemy safe haven of the Korengal Valley in Kunar Province in the largest Coalition military effort since troops first arrived here as part of Operation Enduring Freedom more than four years ago. The offensive, named Operation Mountain Lion, began April 11 with night helicopter insertions of Afghan and Coalition forces at strategic points throughout the valley, followed shortly by troops pushing up on foot through the mouth of the valley. “We're taking...

Two al-Qaida militants reported missing and suspected killed in Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan are key regional commanders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghan and Pakistani analysts said. Marwan As-Suri, believed to be in his 30s, is a Syrian who recently had been appointed to head al-Qaida operations in part of the Pakistani areas bordering Kunar, the Afghan said. According to the Afghan source, another important al-Qaida invitee to the dinner was Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, who reportedly has served as a liaison between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida-backed guerrilla leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Operation Pil Aids Security in Kunar Province U.S. Marines and sailors embark on a mission to improve security in an Afghan province, an endeavor requiring a hike to an elevation over 5,000 feet to reach the mountaintop. By U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Robert M. Storm JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 9, 2005 — U.S. Marines and sailors assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Corps Division, Marine Corps Base Hawaii, conducted Operation Pil in the Watapor Valley of the Kunar Province, Afghanistan, Oct. 16 through 23 in order to improve security and assist in stabilizing the government in the...

Reuters - TALIBAN CLAIM IT HAS KILLED MISSING US SOLDIER, US MILITARY SAYS NO INFORMATION

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...

Sunday, October 17, 2004 Troops stage assaults on insurgents in Afghanistan By Terry Boyd, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Sunday, October 17, 2004 Terry Boyd / S&S Cool temperatures didn't make using cammo stick any easier as Pfc. Joshua Mealor, left, helped Pfc. Shannon Steele, get ready for an air assault into Afghanistan's mountains near the Pakistan border. Mealor and Steele are scouts with the 82nd Airborne Division. Terry Boyd / S&S Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne relaxed in the early morning sun Friday while an AH-64 Apache refueled at Firebase Asadabad. The attack helicopter escorted the CH-47 Chinook helo which...

KARACHI - A massive land and air military operation on either side of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is now under way, with the main goals of catching leading commanders of the Afghan resistance, as well as Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The focal point of the operation at this point is the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on the Pakistani side, and Paktia and Paktika in Afghanistan. On Sunday, Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat confirmed that Pakistani paramilitary troops had been deployed in these tribal areas. In the coming weeks, the operation...