Rod Nordland and Joseph Goldstein, “Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest since 2001, U.N. report released in September 2015, the Taliban had reclaimed more territory in Afghanistan by that time than at any point since the 2001 U.S.-led coalition invaded in response to the September 11 attacks. These forces have allowed the Taliban to remain a credible fighting force with the ability to win and hold territory. Courtney Kube, “The Taliban is gaining strength and territory in Afghanistan,” NBC News, January 30, 2018. officials gauged that the Taliban included at least 60,000 fighters, up from 2014 U.S. (The Taliban’s offspring across the border, the Pakistani Taliban, share the ideology and objectives of its namesake but operate independently and focus on overthrowing the Pakistani government.) January 2018 estimates by Afghan and U.S. Office on Drugs and Crime.The Taliban (Pashto for “students”) are the predominant umbrella group for the Afghan insurgency, including the semi-autonomous Haqqani network. anti-drug chief warned that a "tsunami" of opium will hit Afghanistan's neighbors if border security remains weak and officials fail to intercept the drug, whose profits fund terrorism.Īfghanistan's opium poppy harvest poses a "major threat" to neighboring countries because more than 90 percent of the profits flow to international criminal gangs and terrorists, said Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. The insecurity in the south has also fueled an explosion in Afghanistan's opium crop, source of most of the world's heroin. "We've got big trouble after losing our leader." "Our livelihoods depend on this pomegranate crop, but these stupid Taliban came and started fighting," he said. His family also left its pomegranate crop. Zarif Khan, the head of a fleeing family of 15, said he had no place to take his relatives, and may have to rent a room in Kandahar city. More than 5,600 people have died in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials. Violence in Afghanistan this year is the deadliest since the invasion that toppled the Taliban regime. Our pomegranate orchard and home we left behind." "We just packed up our necessities and left. "The Taliban came into our village and they told us to leave," Khan said. He was driving to Kandahar city to stay with relatives, he said. Karimullah Khan piled his three children into the front seat of a pickup truck and put three female relatives in the back beside household goods and clothes. Humvees and Canadian jeeps crossed Arghandab's countryside on patrols Wednesday alongside hundreds of Afghans fleeing the area in the middle of harvest season, leaving their pomegranate crop at prime picking time. "We are capturing and killing them and I don't think it will cause any problem for Kandahar," he said. But Saqib said he did not believe the militants occupying the villages of Chaharqulba and Sayedan would attempt a run on Afghanistan's main southern city. NATO officials have said hundreds of Taliban tried to overrun Kandahar last year. President Hamid Karzai traveled to Kandahar for Naqib's funeral. The fighters moved into the Arghandab district of Kandahar province this week, about two weeks after the death of a tribal leader, Mullah Naqib, who had kept Taliban fighters out of his region. Saqib said 250 militants were surrounded, and 16 suspected Taliban have been arrested.
We are trying our best to attack those areas where there are no civilians, only Taliban." "The people are fleeing because the Taliban are taking over civilian homes," Sayed Agha Saqib said. Three policemen and one Afghan soldier also died. The troops killed 50 militants in three days of fighting 15 miles north of Kandahar city, the provincial police chief said. U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops had about 250 of the insurgents surrounded. ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan - Afghan civilians piled belongings onto trucks Wednesday and fled two villages infiltrated by hundreds of Taliban militants outside Afghanistan's second-largest city.
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