A bomb has blown up a bus in Afghanistan killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens, officials said on Monday, the latest in a series of deadly blasts that has come as foreign forces withdraw, like reported by reuters.com.

The roadside bomb exploded late on Sunday in the southern province of Zabul, the provincial governor’s spokesman, Gul Islam Sial, said.

Woman and children were among the wounded, he said. An interior ministry spokesman said 28 people were wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Taliban insurgents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Early on Monday, a blast hit a minibus in Parwan province, just north of the capital, Kabul, killing two people and wounding nine, the Interior Ministry said.

Violence has been rising sharply in recent weeks after the United States announced it would withdraw all of its troops by Sept. 11, 20 years after al Qaeda attacks on the United States triggered U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan.

The Taliban announced late on Sunday they would declare a three-day ceasefire for the religious holiday of Eid al-Fitr later this week.

The ceasefire declaration came two days after bombings outside a school in Kabul killed 68 people, most of them girl students, and injured more than 165 people.

Adnaan Aamir, journalist based in Quetta, Pakistan, and founder of Balochistan Voices, outlined in the Interpreter this week that the Pakistani Taliban attempted to take the life the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan. Aamir outlined that there were three potential reasons for this attack, like reported by defenceconnect.com.au.

“Most obviously, the TTP recognises that China is arguably the closest ally of Pakistan at present. The terror group has repeatedly targeted symbols of the Pakistani state and important personalities,” Aamir contested.

“Second, the TTP is happy to further muddy the waters for Pakistan in its regional rivalry with India.

“A further reason for a change of strategy may be that the TTP has decided to retaliate against China over the treatment meted out to Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, where there have been mass incarcerations in the name of countering terrorism.”

Aamir explained that there is currently a US$50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor agreement underway, which will build numerous energy and infrastructure projects across the country. Indeed, not only would this threaten the strength and bargaining power of the US’ newfound strategic partner in India, but will also provide China with a gateway to marry up with their freshly renewed allies in Iran.

Except, a newly emboldened Taliban Emirate is in the way.

Strategically, it would also be hugely beneficial to the US to place a rogue extremist government on the doorstep of a global superpower. Indeed, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have long historical connections to the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement operating in western China, specifically among the Uyghur community.

The situation gets more interesting considering that the Turkistan Islamic Party was dropped from the US terror list by former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in October 2020, arguing that there is too little evidence that they still exist – a line that China promptly denied. Again, curious.

End note

Perhaps there is more than meets the eye regarding the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Certainly, the US has geopolitical impetus to leave the region in ruins for the Taliban to reassert control over.

History has a curious way of repeating itself.

Chasing a lead generated by SIGINT interception, Bangladesh counter-terrorism officials have nabbed a militant of radical Islamist group Ansar-al-Islam, who has admitted to planning an attack on Jatiya Sangsad (parliament), like reported by socialnews.xyz.

Ansar radical Sakib has confessed to his plans to attack the parliament after his arrest from Dhaka’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area on Wednesday evening.

Ali Hasan Osama, a radical preacher known as ‘Banglar Osama’ for his intemperate speeches, was also arrested from Rajbari district early on Thursday, Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit Deputy Commissioner, Saiful Islam, told media persons.

Ali Hasan Osama is seen as a spiritual leader like Mufti Jasim Uddin Rahmani, who was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in connection with secular blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider’s murder.

Ansar use Osama’s provocative speeches and books among their rank and file.

CTTC has reasons to believe that Sakib was member of the Ansar secret hit cell which was planning an attack on the Jatiya Sangsad. Other members of the cell and its leader are still at large, but CTTC has “useful leads” it does not want to reveal at this moment.

“The operation to foil the threat is still on and we are going for other members of the cell who are absconding,” a CTTC official said.

It seems a Pakistani Islamist group, possibly Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e Mohammed was the mastermind behind the attack and the Ansar-al-Islam in Bangladesh was their preferred choice in the country to carry it out, they said.

They were operating in Bangladesh under cover of a Islamist humanitarian group working in Rohingya camps, the officials said.

Officials privy to Sakib’s disclosure point to a plan in which a small cell would infiltrate the Jatiya Sangsad building and storm the hall during the session, lobbing grenades and firing indiscriminately to kill maximum number of lawmakers.

Since most of them are from ruling Awami League, they would be “legitimate targets”.

Sakib has hinted that their Pakistani handlers were interested in a high kill rate rather than hostage taking, which seemed the target of the attack on Indian parliament on December 13, 2001.

A similar max-kill strategy went into the August 2004 grenade attack on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s rally in Dhaka. BNP leader Tareque Rahman, believed to be close to Pakistan’s ISI, is said to have commissioned the attack and his cronies planned with cooperation from ISI ‘covert station’ in Dhaka , according to Bangladesh intelligence sources.

“Essentially, the 1975 coup strategy of total elimination has influenced all these terror attack plans and this one would no different. The target is complete elimination of Awami League leadership to the extent possible, ” said Bangladesh watcher Sukhoranjan Dasgupta, author of a book on the 1975 coup that wiped out almost all of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s family.

As many as four Pakistani soldiers were killed and six others injured in a terrorist attack near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Balochistan, like reported by sify.com.

A statement from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that the attack took place in Zhob district on Wednesday when paramilitary troops were engaged in border fencing activity along the border in the district, Pakistan Today reported.

“Terrorists from across Afghanistan ambushed FC troops moving for fencing […] FC troops responded promptly,” the statement added.

Soon after the attack, the injured soldiers were sent to Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in the capital city Quetta.

Around 90 per cent of work on Pakistan’s side of the fence, on nearly 2,600 kilometers border with Afghanistan, has been completed.

Earlier, ISPR had said the fence is being erected to stop terrorist activities and illegal activities including smuggling from Afghanistan.

The Afghan government said that it had killed more than 60 Taliban insurgents in a series of offensives against the group after assuming control of a key US military base a day earlier, like reported by arabnews.com.

“Backed by aerial support, the operations were conducted independently by local forces without any aid, cooperation or involvement of foreign troops,” Fawad Aman, a defense ministry spokesman, told Arab News.

“During the past 24 hours, 62 Taliban were killed, and 58 others were wounded in these operations,” he said.

The assaults covered several provinces in the south, northeast and eastern regions of the war-torn country, with a focus on the Ghazni province, to the southwest of Kabul, and the southern Helmand province where the US military formally handed over control of the Camp Antonik base to the government on Sunday.

Aman said that the operations were in response to the Taliban’s “provocations” and were aimed at “destroying their planning centers, used for attacking government forces.”

He declined to share the exact number of casualties suffered by the Afghan forces during the clashes. However, two security sources, requesting anonymity, said that more than 40 Afghan police and troops had died in the crackdown.

Meanwhile, in comments to Arab News on Monday, Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, accused Kabul of “showing and testing its force by launching the operations on Taliban-held areas, forcing the Taliban to prevent and respond.”

He refused to comment on how many Taliban members had been killed in the attacks.

With the fate of the US-sponsored peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in limbo, there has been an escalation of violence in recent weeks.

It is expected to spike in the coming months as US-led troops prepare to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, amid fears of the country descending into another civil war.

By formally ending its most protracted conflict in history, which Washington started in late 2001 by ousting the Taliban from power, the US military began withdrawing the remaining 2,500 troops from Afghanistan on Saturday, based on a directive issued by American President Joe Biden last month.

All foreign troops were expected to exit the country by May 1 — the original deadline set by the Taliban before signing a landmark deal with Washington in Doha, Qatar, more than a year ago.

The Taliban have blamed Washington for violating the key condition of the Doha accord, which also pushes Kabul and the Taliban to hold talks and draw a political roadmap for a future government in Afghanistan.

Based on the deal — which also required the Taliban to cut ties with Al-Qaeda and other militants and not use Afghan soil to launch attacks on any other country, including America — the insurgents had halted attacks on foreign troops, but not on Afghan forces.

In comments to reporters last week, Afghan spy chief, Ahmad Zia Saraj, said that the Taliban had ramped up attacks by 24 percent since the Doha deal was signed, highlighting a spike in violence after Biden extended the troops’ presence to Sept.11, the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attacks on US soil by suspected Al-Qaeda members.

The same year, US troops invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban from power for refusing to hand over Al-Qaeda leaders, which Washington accused of staging the twin tower bombings.

In a statement on the 10th anniversary of the raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, Biden said that the US would “remain vigilant about the threat from terrorist groups that have metastasized around the world.”

“As we bring to an end America’s longest war and draw down the last of our troops from Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda is greatly degraded there. We will continue to monitor and disrupt any threat to us that emerges from Afghanistan,” he said.

Taliban spokesman, Mujahid, however, said that “the threat to America is clear,” adding: “We have repeatedly said and want to say again that we will allow no side to harm from Afghanistan the near, the far countries and the United States.”

“This (future threat posed from Afghanistan) is a propaganda for the continuation of occupation and keeping of the troops here,” he told Arab News.

He added that the Taliban were “willing to settle Afghanistan’s more than four decades of crisis through talks,” provided “Kabul shows sincerity” after the departure of foreign troops.

Washington’s withdrawal has created concerns both at home and abroad that the Taliban may seize power by force again and step up their attacks on the Afghan government, which has long relied on the US for financial, logistical and defense aid.

Ghulam Wali Afghan, a lawmaker from Helmand, a part of the Taliban’s main bastion, said that the insurgent group had “increased pressure on Helmand and there is a risk it will fall.”

“With the withdrawal of foreign forces, they will gain control of towns, highways and provinces such as Helmand. The government does not have the means to supply and provide aid (to the troops) on the ground,” he told Arab News.

Retired Gen. Attiqullah Amarkhail agrees. “Afghan forces were vulnerable to Taliban attacks due to lack of coordination, the prevalence of corruption in the system and absence of military doctrine,” he said.

“We have sufficient troops, which is unprecedented in our history, but those factors will play a big role in the future war. There is disunity in government on a peace plan, like other matters, while the Taliban speak with one voice,” he told Arab News.

Amarkhail added that Kabul needed to convince the US that “without putting pressure on Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to join the peace talks,” Washington’s rivals such as Iran, Russia and China will consolidate their influence in Afghanistan.

“But America cannot push Pakistan much either because Russia has managed to establish heavy influence in Pakistan, and if America loses Pakistan, then it will lose its presence in the region to a large extent,” he said.

Minister for Interior Sheikh Rashid Ahmed on Thursday said that Quetta hotel blast was a suicide attack leaving five dead and 11 injured.

Addressing a press conference here, the minister said that external elements are trying to destabilize Pakistan and cannot digest progress of Pakistan. He revealed that 200,000 to 300,000 social media accounts were formed from India in last 10 days to target Pakistan.

He also strongly condemned the Quetta blast and said that he has directed Chief Secretary to investigate the incident The minister said the Ministry of Interior had directed all 22 law enforcement institutions under its jurisdiction, which include the FC, Rangers, Coastal Guards and others to remain on high alert.

He said Pakistan was a great nation and with the help of its great armed forces and intelligence agencies, will thwart all evil designs as well as conspiracies being hatched in India, against it.

The minister said that out of the 11 who were injured, six had left the hospital after getting treated while two are reported to be in critical condition.

The minister said that Balochistan and Gwadar are future of Pakistan and China is closest friend of Pakistan.

To a question, the interior minister clarified the Chinese ambassador was in Quetta for the past few days and is safe.

He rejected speculation that the Chinese ambassador was at the hotel when the blast took place, saying that the diplomat was somewhere else.

He said an elected prime minister, a great army and 220 million people were the guardians of the nation. “We know how to live and die for this country,” he said. He reiterated that armed forces of Pakistan won fight against terrorism after laying down thousands of lives.

The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have killed 68 Taliban terrorists and wounded 74 others in Afghanistan. The operations were carried out on April 7 in Herat, Faryab, Farah, Badakhshan, Kunduz and Kandahar provinces amid the peace talks. The deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Defence Fawad Aman on his Twitter handle shared the news, like reported by republicworld.com.

Fawad Aman in his post informed that 68 Taliban terrorists were killed and 74 were injured by an operation conducted by ANDSF. They operations were carried out for 24 hours in various provinces of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Army(ANA) also defused the 211 IED’s that were placed by the Taliban on public roads.

The Defence Ministry in another statement indicated that the operations carried out by National Defense and Security Forces were backed by air support. The operations that were carried out in Arghandab and Zherai district of Kandahar province were backed by air support, reported ANI quoting The Khaama Press News Agency. 19 Taliban terrorists and 12 others were wounded in the operations. The armed forces also destroyed the arms and ammunitions of the terrorists. Afghan National Army discovered and defused 59 Taliban planted bombs in both of the districts. The Taliban has not released any statement about the casualty figure published by the Ministry of Defense.

The Ministry of Defense Spokesman Fawad Aman informed that 37 Taliban terrorists were killed and 6 others were wounded. The ANDSF arrested 3 others were in Arghandab, Shahwali-Kot and Zheria district of Kandahar province on March 8. The armed forces also detected and defused 50 IEDs which were placed by Taliban on roads. The Taliban and the United States in February 2020 have signed the Doha Agreement. According to the agreement, US will withdraw from Afghanistan if the terrorist group follows counter terrorism commitments.

Hundreds of Turkish jihadists are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan though knows these jihadists have joined Al Qaeda, he has been denying these facts. According to Nordic Monitor report, as part of a vindictive campaign to punish investigators who played a crucial role in cracking down on radical groups in Turkey, the Islamist government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan targeted police chiefs who had acted on US and German intelligence on Turkish jihadists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like reported by weeklyblitz.net.

The intelligence that was shared with Turkey back in 2009 concerned Turkish militants who were recruited to the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) from Turkey and the Turkish diaspora in Europe. The IJU emerged in North Waziristan in northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, and was affiliated with both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It was a splinter group from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IBU) and attracted many Turkish jihadists including some in the diaspora communities in Europe.

Celebrated investigative journalist and editor of Nordic Monitor, Abdullah Bozkurt wrote: According to secret government documents, the Erdoğan government identified all police chiefs and officers whose signatures appeared on papers that ordered the monitoring and investigating of IJU cells that had connections to European countries, especially Germany. Ahmet Manavbaşı (aka Selahattin al Turki), a Turkish national who was a key propagandist for the IJU, and his network in Turkey were the subject of a criminal investigation as police scrambled to decode its network, identify operatives and discover methods used by the IJU in Turkey.

The orders, in line with Turkish law and the criminal code, were presented as criminal evidence against the police chiefs by the government in a bizarre and twisted move.

The first document submitted against the police chiefs was dated April 10, 2010 and indicated that the Istanbul counterterrorism department received intelligence on December 12, 2019 from Turkish intelligence agency MIT, coded as “Institution IV.” The intelligence, passed from the German and US intelligence services, stated that “financial and in-kind fundraising activities are organized by individuals belonging to radical religious organizations operating in the tribal regions of Pakistan in order to finance military articles and basic living supplies needed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan field.”

The police, under orders from the prosecutor’s office, launched a criminal investigation to uncover the network and looked into phone numbers, emails and names mentioned in the intelligence, which was apparently picked up from the notebook of Manavbaşı, who was killed in Pakistan. More than 30 phone numbers were found on Manavbaşı’s contact list, and they were transmitted Turkey for investigation.

The investigation revealed dozens of Turkish jihadists, many already known to Turkish authorities. One identified person was Mahsum Yeşilırmak from Muş province who was operating in connection with the now-defunct jihadist website www.diriliszamani[dot]com. The site openly promoted armed jihad and functioned as a meeting and communications forum for Turkish jihadists. Banners advertising the Afghanistan Islamic Emirate and reports from jihadist regions were posted on the site.

There was an interesting figure on the list. Retired professional football player Candan Sayın (aka Ebu Seyfullah or Hamza), who was in contact with Manavbaşı, was listed in Manavbaşı’s notebook. Police put Sayın and his brother Sinan under surveillance and monitored their movements and communications. Sayın was detained at the airport on April 8, 2010 as he was about to get on a flight to Tehran and from there to Afghanistan. His brother was also detained at his home in Istanbul.

In the police interrogation, Sayın admitted that he wanted to go to Afghanistan for armed jihad, denied the charges of terrorism and said Islam obligated him to join the jihad. He added that he would try again when he was released from detention. He also admitted to his communications with Manavbaşı, whom he knew by his code name, Selahattin el-Turki, who had referred him to a man named Özek Azzam (assumed name). He tried several times to go to Afghanistan with the help of Azzam but failed before his detention at the airport.

The jihadist web site http://www.sehadetzamani.com/ and http://www.takva.com, now both defunct, helped Sayın radicalize with jihadist videos and news from around the world.

The people who were identified by Turkish police based on the phone numbers listed in the notebook were Ertuğrul Gazi Türker, Zekeriya Çiftçi, Muhammed Şerbetçi, Bekir Gültekin, Emin Aydemir, Soner Kazan, lbrahim Kayagil, Hakkı Yıldız, Kemal Durakoglugil, Bülent Sönmez (aka Bekir), Yakup Erdal, Mustafa Ürkmez, Bulut Güç and Mehmet Aydoğdu.

Police also found their associates and added their names to the report: Levent Ureyil, Amkhad Umaroc (aka Vaha), Osman Akyıldız, Serkan Öztürk, Sultan Çakar, İsmail Duru (he was already in the jihadist regions of Afghanistan/Pakistan), Talip Tekin, Mücahid Kemal Elverdi, Furkan İlbar, Haydar Kaya, Özcan Savucu, Emrah İçigen, Mehmet Toprak and Abdulhamit Doğrusözlü.

While the German and US intelligence services informed Turkey about the Turkish jihadists, the police in Turkey and prosecutors were already investigating some of the names on the list as part of a separate investigation into an al-Qaeda-linked group known as Tahşiyeciler in Turkish. The group, also referred as Molla Muhammetçiler, was a radical jihadist group led by Mehmet Doğan (aka Mullah Muhammed el-Kesri), who openly declared his admiration for Osama bin Laden and called for armed jihad in Turkey.

Yeşilırmak, whose name was passed by Turkey’s allies under an intelligence sharing scheme, was also among the members of Tahşiyeciler, which was raising funds and sending jihadists to Afghanistan and Pakistan as well.

Some of the cells run by Tahşiyeciler were also active in Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries. Many members of the group were rounded up by the police in 2010, indicted by the prosecutor on terrorism charges and tried in court.

The investigation revealed how Mullah Muhammed had asked his followers to build bombs and mortars in their homes, urged the decapitation of Americans, claiming that the religion allowed such practices. “I’m telling you to take up your guns and kill them,” he said in recorded sermons, adding, “If the sword is not used, then this is not Islam.” According to Mullah, all Muslims were obligated to respond to then-al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s armed fight.

In 2014, the group escaped the grip of the criminal justice system in Turkey thanks to the intervention of the Erdoğan, who publicly defended the group and secured the release of its members from prison.

The campaign to save Mullah Muhammed was first launched by the Sabah daily, owned by Erdoğan’s family, on March 13, 2014. An article tried to portray Mullah Muhammed as a victim. The government claimed that Mullah Muhammed was framed by the Gülen movement, a group that is highly critical of Erdoğan on a range of issues from corruption to Turkey’s arming of jihadist groups in Syria and Libya.

In 2015 the police chiefs who had investigated both the IJU and Tahşiyeciler faced fabricated criminal charges orchestrated by the government and they were fired, jailed and charged with defaming the al-Qaeda linked group Tahşiyeciler. In the case against the police chiefs, the investigation work that was done based on the German and US intelligence on Turkish jihadists was incorporated in the case file as criminal evidence against the defendants.

The government also went after journalists who criticized the Tahşiyeciler group and even hired a lawyer to file a civil suit in the US against Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, who has been an outspoken critic of radical and jihadist groups, for defaming this fanatic. The case was dismissed by a US judge.

The Turkish president’s lawyer, Mustafa Doğan İnal, defended Tahşiyeciler in court. İnal also represented controversial Saudi businessman Yasin Al-Qadi, a close friend of Erdoğan who for years was listed as an al-Qaeda financier by both the UN Security Council sanction committee and the US Treasury.

International action against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
It is proved beyond doubt – Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been harboring, breeding and exporting jihadists to various countries in the world, with active support from Al-Qaeda and other militancy groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He may even be maintaining connections with Pakistani spy agency Inter Service Intelligence (ISI). Fort Erdoğan’s involvement into international terrorism, western policymakers should immediate impose punitive sanctions of him as well as his cronies.

At least 82 militants have been confirmed dead as warplanes pounded Taliban hideouts and positions in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, the former stronghold of the militant group, a top police official said on Sunday, like reported by canindia.com.

The sorties began on Saturday night in parts of the restive Arghandab district, Xinhua news agency quoted the provincial police spokesman as saying.

Besides killing 82 armed insurgents including Taliban’s key commander Sarhadi, two tanks and several vehicles of the insurgents have also been destroyed, the spokesman said.

Without hinting at possible casualties of the security personnel, he said the clean-up operations backed by warplanes were still continuing in parts of the troubled district.

Taliban militants who are active in parts of Kandahar province are yet to comment on the airstrikes.

Unidentified gunmen killed a female police officer in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad Thursday, officials said, the second deadly attack against women in the city in a week as a spate of targeted killings spreads fear in urban centres, like reported by thenews.com.pk.

The body of a female police officer was taken to a city hospital in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province, said Gulzad Sangar, a hospital spokesman.

Farid Khan, a provincial police spokesman, said two suspects were arrested in connection with the incident, but didn’t provide details. “She was on the way to her job when gunmen attacked her,” he said.

On Tuesday, unknown gunmen shot and killed three women vaccinators in Jalalabad. That incident came less than a month after three female media workers were killed in an attack claimed by Islamic State militants.