41 fighters of the terrorist group of the Islamic State (IS) which also goes by its Arabic name Daesh have been killed in Achin District of eastern Nangarhar province.

Officials say the militants were killed in ground operation and air strikes in Abdulkhil, Pikhi, Nargasi and Mazdaki areas on Tuesday.

Governor’s office says a local commander of the group by the name of Mawlawi Adil and some foreigners were among those killed.

A hideout of the militants was also destroyed in the airstrikes.

Operation Shaheen 18 launched in Achin District last week and Ministry of Defense says all villages of this district have been cleared of Daesh militants.

The operation was later extended to neighboring Nazyan District.

khaama.com

At least 43 Islamic State (IS) militants have been killed during separate operationsby Afghan and foreign forces in the Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province, an official said on Tuesday.

Attaullah Khogyani, the governor’s spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News foreign forces conducted airstrikes against a group of Daesh militants in the Peshi Khor area of the district on Monday night.

The fighters were meeting to plan attacks on security posts, he said, adding 25 of the militants were killed and a large quantity of weapons and ammunition destroyed during the raids.

Khogyani said the Afghan forces also inflicted casualties on a large number of insurgents during an operation codenamed Shahin 18 in different areas of the restive town near the Pakistan border.

Police spokesman Lt. Col. Hazrat Hussain Mashraqiwal confirmed 18 militants had been killed and seven others wounded during the ground offensive in Achin over the past 24 hours. Weapons belonging to the rebels were also destroyed.

pajhwok.com

The U.S. Department of Defense proposes allocating the Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund (CTRF) funds in Central Asia to counter the Taliban, ISIL, and other regionally-based terrorist groups, and to promote stability in the region.

A key partner nation in the region is Tajikistan, says in a recently released Pentagon documents.

The CTPF funds will be used to assist in securing borders with Afghanistan to interdict illicit movement of people, narcotics, and weapons and others.

The CTPF will also enable U.S.-partner interoperability and collaboration. In addition to providing operational training and equipment, the CTPF will support development of partners’ institutional capacity to absorb and apply new capabilities into security forces.

The U.S. started supporting the CTPF in 2014.

akipress.com

Some 14 people were killed and 11 others injured as a suicide bombing rocked Afghanistan‘s eastern province of Parwan on Monday, a provincial government spokesman said.

“The blast took place in Seyyagard District at around midday. The killed and injured were shifted to a hospital in the district, west of provincial capital Charikar city,” spokesman Wahid Seddiqi told Xinhua.

The bomber targeted an Afghan Local Police (ALP) patrol near the district office building.

Those killed included six ALP officers and seven civilians in addition to the bomber, the official added.

“Some six police, including a local police commander, and five civilian passersby were wounded,” he said.

No group has claimed responsibility yet for the attack, but the Taliban insurgent group routinely claims responsibility for such attacks.

xinhuanet.com

Afghanistan security officials in fresh media conversation reported the situation in some unstable regions of the country’s eastern zone, quiet calm after successfully launching anti-Daesh’s militants offensives.
They said more than one thousands of rebels with Daesh loyalty have been killed and a rough number of the questionably-designed group’s members wounded or detained in Achin—one of the eastern province of Nangarhar’s districts, with the main extremists’ training centers and strongholds reported to be on alert for attack against the government’s security posts. Achin, a partially remote district but near the border with the neighboring Pakistan, has recently turned turbulent, after the so-called Islamic State (IS), with main bases in Iraq and Syria influenced it, through the neighboring Pakistan’s border. The militants entered fierce clashes with the security forces, despites repeatedly facing defeats.
Daesh’s members took a step forward, by denouncing, even Muslims’ mini-error concerning to the holy religion, a conversion to infidelity and moreover, under their own made local court, not to spare to kill anyone who has been believed to work for the government or at least support the central and elected system. Anything, on their perspective have been set apart illegal and against the Islamic teachings, perhaps recommending a death to those withstanding their decisions; even against Islam. Killing innocents, including women and children and destroying their houses, behaving wrong with the other religious scholars out of their ranks, were not something representing the core Islamic teachings or aims, but what only demonstrating their fierce and anti-humanity acts.

The militants didn’t hesitate to even behead children among those, the brutal group’s individuals have kidnapped in some insecure areas of the country. As approved [honesty is the best policy], ultimately, the Daesh’s anti-Islamic trend could not reach to the target and finally went in vain, with over one thousand of their members killed in the security forces’ counterterrorism campaign, while a series of fierce clashes erupted between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s IS resulted in numerous subordinates from the two sides death and injury.
According to reports, the latest Daesh’s fighters have either been killed or fled the main stronghold, recently established in the Achin district, where the terrorist leaders in telephone talks with some international media, like BBC underestimated what they have earlier assumed as the core Islamic teachings when inside the Taliban ranks. How to adjudicate their remarks; sometime being weak Muslim and sometime the strong one: when, within the Taliban, they, perhaps were not aware of the main Islamic teachings, but, after allegiance to the Daesh’s strict, they found the main target of what they might have reached in the past.

This is something ridicules, a change in the “eternal Islamic” religion, has never been still taught in no time, and nowhere, but, they wanted a change in the holy religion, when wanting a change in their minds. Many of the holy Islamic teachings have, however been based on the ongoing condition considering accepted tradition, in case the procedure don’t harm the main decrees and values.
So, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, with a wise leadership to distinguish between the main Islamic foe and friends and a strong security force would do its best to use the last alternative for repressing terrorists and in cooperation with the religious scholars would publicize the main feature of Islam to regional and world nations. There is a need for help from both the Afghanistan neighboring countries and those of of the region and the world—the international community, particularly the US and its NATO ally, not to spare honest cooperation to the war-battered nation, while the Islamic Republic is on the new phase of both imposed war and peace process with the moderate Taliban and other armed opposition groups respecting the country’s constitution and abiding by the human rights laws.

The prudent and sober people of Afghanistan should also use their intellect and power of knowing to stay alongside their security forces, by providing them with any information about any suspected signals and support them with all their best to rescue the life of innocents and prevent destruction of the country.

bakhtarnews.com.af

In response to growing concerns about the Islamic State’s growing strength throughout Afghanistan, Russia is now pursuing a military alliance with the Afghan Taliban, under the concept that “my enemy’s enemy is my potential ally.”

The Russian courtship of the Taliban began some time prior to Taliban’s dramatic 15-day takeover of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, which was reportedly facilitated by the delivery of Russian weapons to the group via Tajikistan. Among the Russian-supplied weapons were new AK-47s, PK machine guns and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades).

The US Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper so much as confirmed the Russian increased role in the Central Asia security situation in February 9, 2016 Congressional testimony, where he stated that “Central Asian states remain concerned about the rising threat of extremism to the stability of their countries, particularly in light of a reduced Coalition presence in Afghanistan. Russia shares these concerns and is likely to use the threat of instability in Afghanistan to increase its involvement in Central Asian security affairs.”

Following the death of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, the Islamic State sought to exploit factional splits in the group, and dispatched several hundred ISIL operatives to Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, ISIL now has a presence in 25 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, and has as many as 3,000 fighters in the country now, mostly recruited from the ranks of Taliban splinter factions and other militias.

The point man for the Russian outreach to Taliban is President Vladimir Putin’s personal envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov.  Kabulov was in charge of KGB operations in Afghanistan during the period of Soviet Red Army occupation—including the period of the entire Afghan War. He later was Russia’s Ambassador to Pakistan. In 1995 he established personal contact with Mullah Omar, to negotiate the freeing of Russians whose plane flight had made an emergency landing in Kandahar. He retained those contacts, after he later became the Director of the Second Department for Asian Countries in the Russian Foreign Ministry and then in his second current post as Putin’s personal Afghan envoy.

The Uzbek-born Kabulov has handled his negotiations with the Taliban through Dushanbe, Tajikistan, working with a Taliban liaison, Dr. Tahir Shamlazi, the brother of a former Taliban commander. Shamlazi has also represented Taliban in talks with Chinese officials.

In a recent interview with Interfax, Kabulov gave a detailed assessment of ISIL’s planned expansion into Central Asia and Russia. He identified two “beachheads” facing Tajikistan and Turmenistan, where a large number of Central Asian recruits are being concentrated, after receiving training in three ISIL camps inside northern Afghanistan.

In that interview Kabulov said Russian officials were concerned that the routes through which Afghan heroin is smuggled across the Caspian Sea into Dagistan can be used to smuggle ISIL fighters back into the Caucasus region of Russia to launch what he called “a spring offensive” against Central Asia and Russia.

Speaking at a Moscow conference on Afghanistan in January 2016, Kabulov candidly acknowledged that “Taliban interests objectively coincide with ours. Both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban have said they don’t recognize ISIS… That is very important. We have communications channels with the Taliban to exchange information.”

Russia is not putting all of its Afghan-Central Asian eggs in the Taliban basket. Russia has recently expanded its arms sales to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, negotiating the sale of as many as 20 Mi-35 helicopters to Pakistan, along with surface-to-air missiles. Afghanistan is also planning to purchase Russian Mi-35 helicopters. Russia has also announced first-ever joint maneuvers with Pakistan this year. That was announced on January 22, 2016 by Russian Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleg Salyukov.

Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah confirmed on February 3, 2016 that he is coordinating with Moscow on the peace talks with the Taliban. “We expect countries to set aside their grievances for the sake of dealing with the most important challenge that we are all facing. Russia has an interest because of the terror groups from Chechnya and the Central Asian republics.”

Iran is also warming up to the Taliban, as they escalate their surrogate war with Saudi Arabia, which Tehran believes is still backing ISIL. Iran has recently begun training Taliban fighters in camps in Tehran, Mashhad and Zahedan.

It remains to be seen whether these “strange bedfellow” dealings, such as Russia and Iran’s collusion with the Taliban, can be sustained. US intelligence has definitely taken notice of the emerging channels and is carefully assessing the implications, now that President Obama has agreed to retain a residual US training and counter-terrorism force of nearly 10,000 American and allied troops in Afghanistan through past the end of his presidency.

Russia and China have the opportunity to work through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which now includes all of the Central Asian republics, Pakistan and India. Russia and China have both announced their support for Iran to be the next full member of SCO. Iran already has observer status with the organization. And later this year, Russia is scheduled to begin construction on a 1,100 kilometer gas pipeline from Karachi to Lahore that is scheduled to be completed by 2017, and will provide Pakistan with over 30 percent of its natural gas needs. Such projects can only succeed if there is a degree of stability in the area.

Special Envoy Kabulov, however, got to the heart of Russia’s concerns in his Interfax interview. He said: “Better to fight Islamists on Amu Daryan than on the Volga.”

mebriefing.com

Afghan security forces have cleared 70 percent of Achin district in eastern Nangarhar province of Daesh militants, said security officials on Friday.

The district is considered as the main stronghold of the terrorist group in the region.

Security officials in the province said that they will expand their offensive against Daesh to other districts of the province.

After a long delay, Afghan security forces launched their operations in Achin district last week.

Officials said that security forces have destroyed the main military base of the group and have seized a large number of weapons.

“Daesh rebels were executing and prosecuting people in this military base. Now, they have lost control over most of the area,” said Zaman Waziri, the commander of Selab 201 Military Corps.

Nangarhar police chief, Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, said that a large number of Daesh rebels have also been killed in the district.

“Police, army and public uprising groups will jointly work to safeguard the district,” he added.

Nangarhar governor, Salim Khan Kunduzi, asked internally displaced people from Achin district to return to their homes. He said that schools and hospitals will soon be reopened in the district.

“I call on the brave people of Shinwari tribe to come to their villages and we will help them to come to their homes,” he added.

Meanwhile, residents of the district urged the government not to let Daesh rebels return to the district.

A resident from the district said that foreign militants enter from across the border. The resident also said Daesh had planned to fight Pakistan, but then they started brutalizing locals.

Afghan security forces have been fighting Daesh militants in Achin district for the past eight months. Security officials said that they have killed around 1,000 Daesh rebels during this time.

tolonews.com

Nine paramilitary soldiers were killed in predawn attacks in a restive tribal region of northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, an official said.

In one of the assaults in Mohmand Agency, seven Khasadar Force personnel were killed in gunfire at their check-post in Karapa area of Pandyalai sub-district.

After killing the security personnel at the checkpoint near the Afghanistan border, the militants managed to flee, Assistant Political Agent Naveed Akbar said.

Two more paramilitary soldiers were gunned down by suspected militants in the Mechani area of Mohmand Agency. The victims were guarding a solar tube-well in the area.

pajhwok.com

In a major sucess, Jammu and Kashmir Police today busted a Hizbul Mujahideen module that was operating in North Kashmir’s Bandipora district and arrested four Over Ground Workers (OGWs). The module had planned a massive attack on VIP rallies, police and security forces’ installations.

According to J&K Police, three of the arrested OGWs are residents of Pazalpora and one hails from Kralpora. Sources in Police told Mirror two of the OGWs were desperate to join militancy and had received weapon the other two OGWs. “The arrested OGW’s were hatching conspiracy to kill a few prominent persons from North Kashmir, which included grenade attacks on VIP rallies and attacks on police and security forces. Arms and ammunition were also recovered from them,” the police source said.

A top police official told Mirror that the busting of this module is a major setback to Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir Valley, given that the militant outfit is in the process of reviving its network in North Kashmir. The police produced all the four arrested OGWs before the court, which extended their remand.

mumbaimirror.com