breitbart.com

Fifteen years into the war that few Americans talk about any more, conditions in Afghanistan are getting worse, preventing the clean ending that President Barack Obama hoped to impose before leaving office. Violence is on the rise, the Taliban are staging new offensives, the Islamic State group is angling for a foothold and peace prospects are dim.

Afghanistan remains a danger zone. It’s hobbled by a weak economy that’s sapping public confidence in the new government. Afghan police and soldiers are struggling to hold together the country 13 months after the U.S.-led military coalition culled its numbers by 90 percent.

The bottom line: For a second time, Obama is rethinking his plan to drop U.S. troop levels from 9,800 to 5,500 before he leaves office in January 2017.

“I don’t see any drawdowns” in the near future, said James Dobbins, Obama’s former special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He predicted Obama would leave the decision to the next president.

“They are just hoping that things hold together and they won’t have to face a decision on whether to actually implement the force reduction they’re talking about until late summer, early fall, by which time the administration will be on its last legs,” Dobbins said.

Top military officials, as well as Republicans and Democrats in Congress, think that trimming the force any more during Obama’s presidency is a bad idea. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday that Afghanistan was in a “crisis situation.”

“As the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, it makes no strategic or military sense to continue the withdrawal of American forces,” said McCain, who frequently criticizes Obama’s national security policy.

It’s been a tough year on the Afghan battlefield.

Afghan soldiers and policemen – bankrolled by $4.1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money – fought virtually on their own last year for the first time since the U.S. invasion in 2001. NATO officials have told The Associated Press that Afghan troops are displaying prowess, but suffering sustained heavy casualties – 28 percent higher in 2015 than before the international combat mission ended in December 2014.

Lt. Gen. John “Mick” Nicholson, Obama’s pick to be the next top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday that the Afghan security forces have “more than held their own against the insurgency,” but are not yet “self-sustainable.”

Asked whether the U.S. effort in 2015 had resulted in gains or losses, Nicholson replied: “The Taliban came at the Afghan security forces more intensely than perhaps we anticipated. Because of that, we did not make the advances we … thought we would make.”

When U.S. and other foreign troops left on an announced schedule, the Taliban pounced.

Last fall, the militants briefly seized Kunduz, a city of 300,000 in northern Afghanistan. It marked the Taliban’s first capture of a major city since before the U.S.-led invasion and was marred by the mistaken U.S. strike on a charity hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing 42 people.

Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, acknowledged that Kunduz was a setback. But he said it also reminded Afghans what life was like under the Taliban.

“They don’t want to return to that,” he said.

In the south, Afghan army units have been engaged in fierce fights with the Taliban for months in Helmand province, where militants sow more than $3 billion a year in opium revenue.

The Afghan army in Helmand has been plagued by incompetence and ineffectiveness, partly due to corruption among top officers who are suspected of siphoning off money from salaries, food, fuel and equipment. In recent weeks, the Afghan military has fired and replaced top Afghan army leaders there.

Also in the south, U.S. and Afghan forces last year killed 150 to 200 al-Qaida members in a large training camp, complete with tunnels, that was discovered in neighboring Kandahar province, another militant stronghold. Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. analyst who served as an adviser to the U.S. military in Afghanistan, noted that at the beginning of the Obama administration, the U.S. talked of there being fewer than 100 members of al-Qaida in Afghanistan. “Now we’re talking about 200 in Kandahar province alone?”

The Defense Department told Congress in a report last month that violence is rising in much of the country and the Taliban can be expected to build momentum. It also portrayed the Afghan forces as favoring a defensive crouch that limits their ability to go after the Taliban in some areas.

In a different report to Congress this week, the U.S. government’s Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction said the Taliban now control more territory than at any time since 2001.

A current Afghan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, acknowledged the army’s many setbacks this year, but said the Taliban had sought to achieve major victories after the U.S.-led coalition announced it would end its combat mission on Dec. 31, 2015. Instead, they failed to retake huge swaths of land, he said.

He also noted that Afghan plans to shift its military from a conventional force to one that’s more mobile and nimble to respond to the guerrilla-type warfare conducted by the Taliban. He said 2016 “is going to see some changes.”

Obama already backtracked once on drawing down the American force.

Initially, he had announced plans to reduce the force to 5,500 troops by the end of last year, and to 1,000 by the end of 2016. Last fall, Obama changed his mind, saying the situation remained too fragile for the American military to leave. He announced plans to keep the current force of about 9,800 in place through most of 2016 to perform not in an offensive combat role but to continue counterterrorism missions and advise Afghans battling a resurgent Taliban.

While the Taliban is fighting turf battles against IS in some places, the Afghan and U.S. forces worry that the brutal militant network – estimated at 1,000 to 3,000 strong in Afghanistan – could gain a foothold, cause further instability and use Afghanistan as a new base from which to plan attacks on the West.

The Obama administration recently expanded the U.S. military’s authority to offensively target IS militants in Afghanistan in addition to al-Qaida.

If security is weak, the economy might be worse.

Mohammad Qayoumi, an Afghan native who left his job as president of San Jose University in California to advise President Ashraf Ghani, said that when the bulk of the foreign forces left the country, 500,000 Afghan jobs were lost. But he said the Afghan government has many economic development projects in the works to help wean the nation off international assistance.

Qayoumi, who briefed reporters recently in Washington, rattled off a list of infrastructure and construction projects planned. “No country has gone from poverty to prosperity through grants and aid,” he said.

ap.org

Russia is increasing its military presence and conducting large counter-terrorism military exercises in the south of its North Caucasus province of Dagestan in southern Russia.

The military exercises were triggered by a December 29 Islamist insurgency gun attack at the Derbent citadel, a Unesco World Heritage site and big tourist attraction. A group called “warriors of the Caliphate,” affiliated with so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh), claimed responsibility for the attack.

The insurgents opened fire on a group of tourists accompanied by two border guards from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on the citadel’s viewing platform. One border guard was killed, and eleven others were injured.

At least 120 people were killed by insurgents in the Derbent region last year. Since this was the second shooting in the Derbent area in the past three weeks, it is clear that a local cell of the armed underground movement was involved. The insurgent cell is apparently targeting the police and FSB (Federal Security Service) in that part of Dagestan. After both attacks, the militants managed to escape unharmed.

Russia’s media is playing down the ISIS connection. Russia also attempted to do that after an ISIS affiliate brought down a Russian Metrojet Airbus A321 airliner over Egypt in November. As we wrote in “5-Nov-15 World View — Bombing of plane in Egypt threatens Russia’s Syria strategy”, the Russian military intervention in Syria is inflaming Sunni Salafists and jihadists, who have been threatening to increase their attacks on Russian targets as a result.

The reason is that the injection of Orthodox Christian Russian troops in Syria is reviving the memory of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, which Salafists saw as a Christian invasion of a Muslim country. It brought the rise of modern Sunni jihadist movements, including the leadership of Osama bin Laden and the formation of al-Qaeda, so the invasion runs very deep in the psyches of Sunni Salafists and jihadists. Russia’s new intervention targeting mostly Sunni Muslims in Syria, appears to be a repeat.

With ISIS now claiming credit for terrorist attacks in Dagestan, Russian officials have to deal with new problems. More and more Russians are questioning the wisdom of the Syria intervention. Many reports indicate that Russian soldiers do not wish to fight there. Reports of ISIS attacks on Russian airliners and tourist locations will only turn public opinion against the Syria intervention.

breitbart.com

In wake of the Bacha Khan University attack, security in schools across the country has been beefed up while mock security exercises were carried out in many others since last week.

The Elite Police Force personnel took part in a number of drills to fight against militants in various schools of Peshawar on Friday.

In Karachi, students and parents were informed on Tuesday that all institutes under the Army Public Schools & Colleges System in the city will remain closed till January 31 due to security concerns.

Earlier on Monday, the Punjab government announced closure of all public and private schools in the province from Jan 26 to 31, citing “extremely cold weather” as the reason.

dawn.com

Launching his annual report for 2015 in Brussels, the NATO chief said they would continue to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police.

He said the Afghan forces faced significant challenges, but they were holding their ground.  “We decided, in 2015, to maintain our current level of troops this year and we are looking at how we can contribute to the funding of the Afghan security forces until 2020.”

He said every NATO ally was part of the global coalition to counter Daesh or Islamic State and the coalition’s high degree of interoperability was a key asset.

To address the root causes of instability, he said, NATO was working even closer with partners in the region.  “We are building the defence capacity of Jordan.  We will soon start training Iraqi officers and we are working with Tunisia on special operations forces and intelligence to help them be stronger in defending themselves.”

Stoltenberg said in the year 2015, they saw brutal terrorist attacks in their cities and the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two.

“We also saw it in Russia’s continued actions in Ukraine and its recent military build-up in Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean.  But last year also showed how NATO is responding.”

He said they implemented the greatest strengthening of their collective defence since the end of the Cold War and cuts in defence spending among European Allies had now practically stopped.

The alliance chief said they  had visibly increased NATO’s presence in the eastern part of the alliance and to the south, they had agreed to increase the presence of AWACS early warning aircraft over Turkey, as they continued to augment Turkey’s air defences.

“We have tripled the size of the NATO Response Force to more than 40,000 troops, and at its core is our new, very high readiness ‘Spearhead Force’ that is now operational,  ready within days to deploy to wherever it is needed.  I was really impressed when I saw it in action at its first deployment exercise in Poland.”

He said the alliance was improving its intelligence and early warning systems to combat hybrid warfare, speeding up decision-making and enhancing cyber defences. “Last year, we conducted around 300 allied exercises, including the largest and most complex one in over a decade.”

The NATO chief said they would continue to step up exercises this year and would remain transparent in what they do.

He said over the last two years, Russian air activity close to NATO’s European airspace had increased by around 70 percent.  In response, he said, allied aircraft scrambled over 400 times to intercept Russian aircraft. “We have made substantial progress with our new Alliance Ground Surveillance system.”

afghanistantimes.af

Islamic State is recruiting hackers in India to steal sensitive data from governments with offers worth as much as $10,000 a job.

Islamic State is recruiting hackers in India to break into government systems, with the India Times reporting that the hackers are being paid over $10,000 for every job they do.

India-based cyber crime expert Kislay Chaudhary told the India Times: “There are various underground communities online where hackers interact regularly. Our investigation reveals that for the past six months lucrative offers for stealing government data came pouring in and hackers were offered huge sums. Such amounts has never been offered to any Indian hacker before.”

Experts in India said that over 30,000 hackers could have already been in contact with Islamic State.

In November Islamic State issued guidelines on how to defend itself against hacking after hacktivist group Anonymous declared “war” in response to the deadly Paris attacks on 13 November.

Anonymous opened an #OpParis Twitter account to provide updates on its campaign against Islamic State and released the names of 9,200 accounts believed to be affiliated with Islamic State.

Islamic State’s own guidance on how to avoid being hacked was discovered by researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, a London thinktank.

The guidelines include a recommendation to use virtual private networking (VPN) tools to create encrypted connections and to change IP address frequently. It also recommend avoiding clicking on links if the source is not known, avoiding the use of direct messages on Twitter, avoiding the use of email accounts as Twitter user names, and blocking and avoiding talking to unknown contacts on Telegram.

computerweekly.com

A senior leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) disclosed they have set up a task force to counter the reported activities of supporters to recruit especially the youth in restive Mindanao to join the Daesh extremists.

Mohagher Iqbal, the MILF chief negotiator, said the task force was composed mainly of preachers to counter the “distortion of the teaching” of groups or individuals claiming to be Daesh recruiters in Mindanao.

Iqbal confirmed the recruiters were active particularly in the provinces of Cotabato as well as Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur.

“The recruitment activities as well as the video of the training that came out were authentic,” said Iqbal as he insisted that the formal organisation setting up a Daesh unit in Mindanao was still subject to validation.

However, the military has repeatedly denied that such Daesh recruitment activities have occurred in Mindanao and blamed instead groups riding on the popularity of the extremists to pursue their “criminal intentions” like extortion.

Iqbal, meanwhile, admitted that many Mindanaoans especially the youth and even professionals have become “frustrated” over the failure of Congress to pass the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that arose from the signing of an historic agreement signed by the government and the MILF.

Under the BBL, a new Bangsamoro political entity would be set up.

The initial core territory of the new entity is to come from ARMM composed of the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi as well as Marawi City.

gulftoday.ae

US military commanders have warned the Obama administration that thousands of American troops could remain in Afghanistan for decades, says a report published on Wednesday.

The Washington Post, which published the report, quoted a senior Pentagon official as telling its correspondents: “What we’ve learned is that you can’t really leave.”

“The local forces need air support, intelligence and help with logistics. They are not going to be ready in three or five years. You have to be there for a very long time.”

The report points out that many Republican and Democrat foreign policy advisers, looking beyond the Obama presidency which ends this year, are willing to endorse a long-term American presence in Afghanistan.

The Post notes that the commanders’ assessment makes it impossible for the Obama administration to pull most of soldiers out of Afghanistan by early 2017, as it had planned.

Senior military officials, who spoke to the Post, said that their assessment “reflects the Afghan government’s vulnerability to continued militant assaults and concern that terror groups like Al Qaeda continue to build training camps whose effects could be felt far beyond the region”.

“This is not a region you want to abandon,” said Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official who would likely be considered a top candidate for secretary of defence if Hillary Clinton wins the 2016 presidential election. “So the question is what do we need going forward given our interests?”

The report also notes that following the departure of most foreign forces in Afghanistan two years ago, the Taliban have significantly increased their influence in the country by seizing a number of districts and inflicting sizable losses on government forces.

paktribune.com

A group of militants, believed to be Taliban, have gunned down four de-miners in an attack in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan.

Officials say the de-miners were busy in their routine job in Gerishk District when Taliban attacked them around 11:00 am today.

One de-miner also sustained injuries in the attack.

Omar Zwak, spokesperson for the governor of Helmand province confirmed the incident.

Although, local officials hold Taliban responsible for the attack but the group’s spokesperson has not yet commented on the report.

Helmand is among the volatile provinces of Afghanistan where anti-government armed militant groups, including Taliban, are actively operating.

Currently, there are heavy clashes between security forces and Taliban in parts of the province.

khaama.com

17 loyalists of the terrorist group the Islamic State (IS) which also goes by its Arabic name Daesh have been killed in newest drone strikes in eastern Nangarhar province, Ministry of Defense announced on Monday.

A statement released by the ministry states that the air strikes were carried out on positions of Daesh in Deh Bala and Achin districts on Sunday.

According to the statement, 13 militants of the group were killed in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) strike in Gurguri area of Deh Bala District and four others in Bandar Khwar village of Achin District.

This comes a day after a commander of the group was killed along with five of his men in a similar attack in Achin District. The commander was identified as Maiwand.

UAVs are being used by NATO forces under its Support Resolute mission to assist Afghanistan in counter-terrorism operations.

khaama.com