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Yeah so that absolute catastrophe that was the Biden administration's immediate and complete pull-out of Afghanistan -- turning our backs on many Americans, as well as any and all Afghans who have helped us for the past who-even-remembers-how-many years, and handing the country of Afghanistan as well as $85 billion in U.S. weapons and vehicles over to the Taliban terror group -- continues to pay off in spades.Afghanistan is now on the brink of a mass starvation event that will be especially brutal on children:Nearly four months since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan is on the brink of a mass...

The US and a host of allied countries have called on the Taliban to end the targeted killings of former members of Afghan security forces. In a joint statement, the 22 nations demanded that the Islamist regime respect its pledge not to harm former government or security personnel. "We are deeply concerned by reports of summary killings and enforced disappearances", the statement says. It follows a damning report on killings and abductions by the Islamist regime. Released by the Human Rights Watch earlier this week, the report documented more than 100 executions and abductions of former Afghan government officials since...

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was silent for several seconds before telling Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Saturday what his regrets are about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. "Do you have any regrets about the Afghan withdrawal?" Baier asked Austin during a keynote discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. After a silence that lingered for nearly 10 seconds, Austin replied, "Bret, I regret the fact that we lost 13 of our finest at Abbey Gate. I regret that we lost 10 civilians in an errant strike.

The Taliban are carrying out retaliatory killings in spite of their assurances to the contrary. But don’t worry because the United States is “deeply concerned” about it.

Sources told @aamajnews24 that the Iranian side is using heavy weapons (as you can see towards the end of the clip), and the Taliban have deployed the American Humvees in the fight against the Iranians. There are no details yet on why these clashes have broken out.

KABUL (AP) — Taliban fighters have summarily killed or forcibly “disappeared” more than 100 former police and intelligence officers since taking power in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said in a report Tuesday. The group pointed to continuing retaliation against the armed forces of the ousted government despite an announced amnesty. Taliban forces have hunted down former officers using government employment records and have targeted those who surrendered and received letters guaranteeing their safety, the report said. In some cases, local Taliban commanders have drawn up lists of people to be targeted, saying they committed “unforgivable” acts. “The pattern of killings...

Jobless and engulfed in debt, Afghan brick kiln worker Fazal said the country's imploding economy had left him with a stark choice - marry off his young daughters, or risk the family starving to death. Last month, he received a $3,000 dowry payment after handing over his 13- and 15-year-old daughters to men more than twice their age. If the money runs out, he may have to marry off his seven-year-old, he said. 'I had no other way to feed my family and pay off my debt. What else could I have done?' he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from...

Women have been banned from appearing in television dramas in Afghanistan under new rules imposed by the Taliban government. ...The latest set of Taliban guidelines, which have been issued to Afghan television channels, features eight new rules. They include the banning of films considered against the principles of Sharia - or Islamic - law and Afghan values, while footage of men exposing intimate parts of the body is prohibited. Comedy and entertainment shows that insult religion or may be considered offensive to Afghans are also forbidden. The Taliban have insisted that foreign films promoting foreign cultural values should not be...

A former U.S. soldier in Pakistan said the U.S. Embassy repeatedly hung up on him as he pleaded for help and wouldn’t let him enter the building to speak with a government official. The former staff sergeant, an Afghan native, said he traveled from the U.S. to Pakistan to try to help his family escape the Taliban and flee Afghanistan.... ...The veteran said the Taliban, ISIS-K and al Qaeda were all at the Pakistan border, making it harder and more dangerous for anyone trying to escape Afghanistan. ... ..."If there's anyone out there that can help me, help my family,...

The parade was linked to the graduation of 250 freshly trained soldiers, defence ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarazmi said. The exercise involved dozens of U.S.-made M117 armoured security vehicles driving slowly up and down a major Kabul road with MI-17 helicopters patrolling overhead. Many soldiers carried American made-M4 assault rifles. Most of the weapons and equipment the Taliban forces are now using are those supplied by Washington to the American-backed government in Kabul in a bid to construct an Afghan national force capable of fighting the Taliban.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist ambitions seem to be seeking an international role in post-U.S. Afghanistan in alliance with the Taliban, Qatar, Pakistan and Malaysia. The trouble is, Turkey, among the new sharia alliance in the making, is the only country with institutional ties to the Western world. Biden has weakened himself and his country so badly that the superpower was reduced to the point of being blackmailed by NATO's only Islamist member. Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has made it clear: "If the U.S. is to be in the Middle East, it must cooperate with Turkey." Afghanistan is...

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the Gulf nation of Qatar has agreed to represent American interests in Afghanistan following the closure of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in late August. The announcement suggests the Biden administration has little confidence that it will reopen the embassy in the near future. But Blinken said the U.S. had “offered an opportunity” to leave Afghanistan to all American citizens “who we’ve identified as being prepared to depart, having the necessary travel documents.” Several hundred Americans are reported to still be in Afghanistan, though not all have indicated they want...

In a phone conference with reporters on Monday, U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan Thomas West said the Biden administration is considering a “roadmap” to normalizing relations with the Taliban regime. The vague roadmap West spoke of included some requirements the Taliban seems to have little interest in meeting.

Afghanistan's ex-finance minister has blamed the government's fall on corrupt officials who invented "ghost soldiers" and took payments from the Taliban. Khalid Payenda told the BBC that most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government's books did not exist. He said phantom personnel were added to official lists so that generals could pocket their wages. The Taliban rapidly seized control of Afghanistan in August, as US forces withdrew after 20 years in the country. Mr Payenda, who resigned and left Afghanistan as the Islamist group advanced, said records showing that security forces greatly outnumbered the Taliban were incorrect....

Kyle Shideler, the Director/Senior Analyst for Homeland Security & Counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, said it best: “They may have a 7th-century law code, but they grift with the best of the 21st century.” The Taliban does indeed appear to have caught on to one of the most lucrative gravy trains of the first part of the 21st century and are eager to get in on the loot; the jihad terror group has issued a call for aid from international organizations to help it fight the scourge of climate change. Apparently, the Taliban would have us believe...

The executive director of an organization dedicated to helping LGBT individuals in dangerous states told France24 in an interview published Tuesday that the Taliban had organized a “kill list” of suspected LGBT people in Afghanistan and is widely distributing it among its jihadis in an attempt to execute all those identified. The Taliban is a radical Sunni Islamist organization that considers gay identity haram, or an affront to its interpretation of Islam. Jihadists in nearly all terrorist organizations have engaged in brutal killings of people suspected of being gay or lesbian; some jihadists support forcing gay people into gender reassignment...

Iran is hosting a meeting of... the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia holding talks in the Iranian capital Tehran on Afghanistan's political future and the formation of a new government...Iran's population is majority Shiite but Sunni minorities live predominantly in the areas near the border with Afghanistan. The Sunnis have long complained about discrimination by Iranian authorities.Due to dilapidated infrastructure and a lack of health and educational facilities, the areas near the Afghan border are the poorest and least developed in Iran...But Fatemeh Aman, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI),...

Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

Islamic State militants stormed Afghanistan’s main military hospital, now housing injured Taliban fighters and veterans of the former Afghan military, and killed at least 23 people in the latest eruption of violence since the country’s U.S.-backed government collapsed in mid-August. Though there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the Taliban’s chief spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that five Islamic State militants participated in Tuesday’s complex attack and were all killed. The extremist group has intensified the tempo of strikes against Taliban targets and the country’s Shiite minority in recent weeks. It stormed the same hospital, in Kabul’s Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood,...

Three guests were shot dead at a wedding reception in eastern Afghanistan on Friday night, apparently because music was being played, according to the Taliban. The attack was carried out by three assailants who claimed to be members of the Taliban before opening fire, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters at a press conference Sunday. Mujahid said the gunmen attacked a reception taking place in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar Province. A local journalist also told CNN at least two people had been killed and 10 others injured. The Taliban spokesman added that it was not permissible to kill...