| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan |
| IS militants are on the run, claims Ashraf Ghani |
| 2016-03-17 |
| [DAWN] Afghanistan's Caped 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. .. played down on Tuesday recent failures to jumpstart peace talks with the Taliban, instead choosing to highlight recent successes against fighters of the hard boy Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... (IS) group in Afghanistan. Taliban have made significant gains in recent months, briefly capturing the northern city of Kunduz and threatening to overrun multiple districts in the southwest. The latest efforts to bring them to the negotiating table faltered when the hard boy group issued a statement refusing to participate. Mr Ghani, facing rising domestic criticism and eager to ensure continued international aid, has publicly focused on a military campaign in eastern Afghanistan aimed at IS, often referred to as Daesh [Islamic State], which has struggled to replicate its successes in Iraq and Syria. "Daesh [Islamic State] is on the run," he said at a joint news conference with NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, responding to a direct question about the Taliban. "They are running for cover." "No quarter would be given" to IS fighters, he added. A combination of air strikes by US warplanes and "massive" ground operations by Afghan forces had left IS reeling, he said. Mr Stoltenberg reiterated that the coalition had no intention of sending combat troops back to fight in Afghanistan, more than a year after the NATO-coalition declared an end to its combat mission. |
| Posted by:Fred |