Afghan army

By Josh Smith KABUL, Nov 5 – Kabul’s military training academy is churning out classes of enthusiastic women to serve in Afghanistan’s army, but the realities of rising violence and a conservative society make the future for the young recruits far from certain. Some of the nearly 150 women training to be officers in the

KABUL, July 10 – Afghan forces are suffering rising levels of battlefield casualties this year after unprecedented numbers of police and soldiers were killed and wounded in 2015, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said. U.S. Army General John Nicholson, in some of his first remarks since the United States last week scaled back its

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, May 31 – Gunmen in Afghanistan killed nine bus passengers and kidnapped 170 on Tuesday outside the northern city of Kunduz in an attack blamed on Taliban insurgents, a provincial official said. The attackers stopped three buses on a road and ordered the passengers out, shot dead nine of them and kidnapped the

By Mohammad Stanekzai LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, May 12 – A shadowy new unit run by Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency has begun operations in southern Helmand province with a mission to exploit divisions within the Taliban insurgency, government officials and a militant spokesman said. The aim is to weaken an increasingly dangerous enemy by turning the

By Josh Smith KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, April 27 – Bullet-ridden bunkers and signposts shredded by rockets bear witness to dozens of Taliban attacks this month on police posts around Kunduz, the northern Afghan city that fell briefly in September in the insurgents’ biggest victory to date. Unlike that short yet humiliating blow to Afghan security forces

By James Mackenzie KABUL, April 12 – The Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive on Tuesday, pledging to launch large-scale offensives against government strongholds backed by suicide and guerrilla attacks to drive Afghanistan‘s Western-backed government from power. The announcement of the formal start of “Operation Omari”, named after the late Taliban founder Mullah