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Four Haqqani Commanders Killed in East Afghanistan
U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan have killed four commanders of the Haqqani network, a militant group affiliated with the Taliban, as government forces try to retake a district captured by insurgents last week, Afghan officials said on Tuesday.
Naqeeb Ahmad Atal, a spokesman for the governor of Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan, said 120 militants were also killed in the strikes in Jani Khil, a strategically located district at a crossroads on a major route into Pakistan.
But Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied the report as “baseless”, saying the air strikes had killed only eight people. He said 48 members of the security forces had been killed in fighting in the district.
Insurgents overran the center of Jani Khil late on Friday, a significant success after they had stepped up attacks across Afghanistan in recent weeks.
Afghan army spokesman Fazlkhuda Ibrahimkhil said U.S. drones carried out Monday’s air strikes, hitting fighters gathered in the town.
Colonel Michael Lawhorn, director of public affairs for Afghanistan’s NATO-led mission, confirmed that U.S. forces had carried out attacks in support of Afghan forces on Monday. He declined to provide details while the fighting was going on.
“I can confirm that U.S. forces conducted four air strikes,” he said in an emailed statement.
Another Afghan official said several military vehicles captured by the insurgents were also destroyed.
One senior Afghan security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said about 1,200 fighters, most from the Haqqani network, were involved in last week’s attack on Jani Khil.
The involvement of Haqqani fighters, whose traditional stronghold has been in eastern Afghanistan, underscores the group’s important role in Taliban military operations following the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a U.S. air strike in May.
Unlike Mansour, new Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, a religious scholar, is not believed to have much command experience.
His appointment has led many analysts to suggest a growing role for deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, commander of the network named after his father, a veteran Islamist who battled Soviet forces during the 1980s and later sided with the Taliban.
The Haqqani network has been known for kidnappings and high-profile attacks in cities but is rarely known to take part in big attacks on Afghan government positions.
One of the commanders killed in the air strike had been district chief in Jani Khil for the Taliban. Another came from the Waziristan region on the Pakistani side of the border and was suspected of involvement in the killing of 42 construction workers in Jani Khil four years ago, Atal said.
After a lull following Mansour’s killing, there has been heavy fighting in the southern province of Helmand as well as in the area around Kunduz, the northern city that briefly fell to the Taliban last year.
A tripartite meeting between the delegations of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan was held in Kabul with the aim of connecting North Asia to South Asia and reducing transit and transportation costs among these three countries, the Ministry of Trade and Commerce said in a statement.
In this meeting, an agreement was reached on the creation of a joint technical committee to continue the talks.
This tripartite meeting was held under the leadership of Nooruddin Azizi, the Acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Vice President of Turkmenistan and Srik Zhumangarin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan.
Earlier, a bilateral meeting was held between the delegation of the Islamic Emirate and Turkmenistan. The ministry of commerce said the participants of the meeting discussed the construction of a large joint logistics center in Torghondi, the trilateral transit agreement between the IEA, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, the expansion of Afghanistan’s railway, solving issues related to Afghan transit and export goods, and a number of other commercial issues.
Acting Minister of National Defense Mohammad Yaqub Mujahid has said that no destructive groups including Daesh have physical presence in Afghanistan, adding the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) will not allow anyone to pose threat to any country in the region from the Afghan soil.
Mujahid made the remarks in a meeting with a delegation from Malaysia in Kabul on Thursday.
According to a statement released by the Ministry of Defense, Mujahid highlighted Malaysia’s “good treatment” of Afghan refugees and its long-standing relations with Afghanistan, and said that Malaysia is a powerful Islamic country and visits should increase.
He added that with the establishment of the Islamic Emirate, occupation and war ended in Afghanistan, and the country is fully secure.
Based on the statement, the Malaysian delegation called Afghanistan a friendly country and while emphasizing on comprehensive cooperation, it assured that what they have seen in Afghanistan will be shared with the authorities of their country.
The European Union signed an agreement worth 17 million euros with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to improve access to basic services, increased economic opportunities and protection for Afghans on the move and their host communities in Afghanistan.
The needs of women and girls are a particular focus of the programme, EU said in a statement released on Thursday.
The statement noted that from January 2023 until April 2024, over 1.5 million Afghans returned from Pakistan and Iran.
“I am deeply moved by the hardship returnees face when being deported to Afghanistan. In a country suffering from poverty and climate change, and in a city that just saw devastating earthquakes, this truly is a crisis within a crisis.”, said Peteris Ustubs, Director for the Middle East, Asia and Pacific of the European Commission’s Department for International Partnerships during the signing ceremony at the IOM transit centre in Herat.
Raffaella Iodice, EU Chargée d’Affaires a.i. to Afghanistan, added “The solidarity of the Afghan people towards their brothers and sisters is an inspiration. We must assure that communities hosting and helping new arrivals are supported. The partnership with IOM ensures access to essential services and provides protection for Afghan returnees and their host communities. As women and girls can be particularly affected, we make sure that all members of society can benefit”.
“IOM’s continued partnership with the EU has been critical in enabling our teams to reach hundreds of thousands of Afghan returnees and other vulnerable communities in the country”, said IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission, Maria Moita. “Thanks to this renewed commitment, we will be able to focus on addressing the immense challenges in the areas of return and contribute to reintegration, social cohesion, and longer-term solutions for those communities.”
This additional contribution is part of a 5-year programme that is being implemented across Afghanistan and in four countries in the region. It builds on the EU’s previous support to IOM to improve the wellbeing of Afghans forced to return to the country, EU said.
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