A key Taliban commander and close aide to former Taliban supreme leader and founder has asked the group’s current supreme leader Mawlavi Haibatullah Akhundzada to cut ties with Pakistan. The top Taliban leader, Syed Mohammad Tayyab Agha, reportedly asked Akhundzada in a letter which was obtained by Gandhara, a news portal close to RFE/RL. “How can the Taliban leadership, now ...

Three senior Afghan Taliban members traveled to Pakistan this week and held a series of meetings with Pakistani officials in Islamabad, mainly to brief them about the recent talks held in Qatar between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul, a senior Taliban official, an Afghan diplomat and a Pakistani official said Saturday. The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, said ...

KABUL: The Taliban delegation demanded the release of prisoners and removal of the group’s leaders from the UN blacklist during the informal talks held in Qatar, it has been reported. The group also demanded that the Taliban group should be identified as a formal movement before they agree to participate in peace talks. The Afghan Taliban officials, based in Qatar ...

KABUL: The Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security (NDS) Chief, Masoom Stanikzai has met with the brother of Mullah Mohammad amid reports secret peace talks have revived in Qatar. According to the sources in Taliban group, quoted in a report by The Guardian, among those present at the meetings held in September and October was Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, brother ...

KABUL: A splinter group of the Taliban in Afghanistan has said the group is ready to end fighting if the exit of the foreign troops from the country is guaranteed. The group led by Mullah Mohammad Rasool, an arch rival of the slain Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, has said the government should guarantee the exit of foreign troops. A ...

KABUL: A former top Taliban leader has said the group is under pressure to revive peace talks with the Afghan government months after the group rejected calls by the Afghan government to participate in direct peace talks. Agha Jan Motasim has told the New York Times that the main motives behind growing demand to revive peace talks are latest mounting ...

KABUL: The Taliban supreme leader Mawlavi Hibatullah Akhundzada has instructed the group’s fighters to adopt softer approach in his message released on the occasion of Eid-ul-Adha. The statement by Akhundzada comes in contrast to the brutal approach of insurgency adopted by the group as Taliban accused of causing the majority of civilian casualties in the country. Claiming victory in the ...

The Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah said Afghanistan is fighting the forces of devil and darkness as he insisted on increasing support to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). In his speech during a conference on the Future of Police in Afghanistan, CEO Abdullah said Afghanistan is facing a fight that is against humanity. Abdullah further added that ...

GARDEZ: Taliban have overrun the Janikhel district of southeastern Paktia province after fierce fighting with security forces, local officials confirmed on Saturday. The militants also seized two key security posts in the embattled town near the Pakistanborder after hours of deadly clashes that left scores of people dead on both sides. Naqib Ahmad Atal, the governor’s spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan ...

The leader of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network Ayman Al-Zawahiri has called on supporters to reject the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group and support the Taliban group in Afghanistan. Al-Zawahiri made the call in his latest video which was reportedly published on Sunday, titled ‘Be Not Divided Among Yourselves’. He call on world’s Muslims should “rally around ...