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Afghanistan vows to crush Islamic State havens after attack
[DAWN] Afghanistan's president on Monday vowed to "eliminate" all safe havens of the bad boy Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 group as the country marked a subdued 100th Independence Day after a horrific wedding attack claimed by the local IS affiliate.

President Ashraf Ghani
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money...
's comments came as Afghanistan mourns at least 63 people, including children, killed in the Kabul bombing at a wedding hall late on Saturday night. Close to 200 others were maimed.

Many outraged Afghans ask whether an approaching deal between the United States and the Taliban
...Arabic for students...
 to end nearly 18 years of fighting America's longest war will bring peace to long-suffering civilians. The bomber detonated his explosives in the middle of a dancing crowd, and the IS affiliate later said he had targeted a gathering of minority Shias, whom it views as apostates deserving of death.

Both the bride and groom survived, and in an emotional interview with local broadcaster Tolo News the distraught groom, Mirwais Alani, said their lives were devastated within seconds.

A sharply worded Taliban statement questioned why the US failed to identify the attackers in advance. Another Taliban statement marking the independence day said to "leave Afghanistan to the Afghans". More than anything in its nearly year-long negotiations with the US, the Taliban want some 20,000 US and allied forces to withdraw from the country.

The US envoy in talks with the Taliban, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Sunday said the grinding of the peace processor should be accelerated to help Afghanistan defeat the IS affiliate.

Posted by: Fred 2019-08-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=548380