A senior police chief, General Zarawar Zahid, was killed in an IED blast on Sunday in the volatile province of Nangarhar. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Nangarhar has faced increasing instability as Islamic State (ISIS) militants have increased attacks in the region. Zabihullah Zmarai, a member of the provincial council, said, “Out of the 22 districts, only six are secure.” Attempting to mount a counterattack to stave off collapse of Hisarack district, Gen. Zahid visited the embattled district, where he was struck by the blast. Zahid was a well-respected officer who boasted an impressive resume that included stints in Zabul and Ghazni provinces. In recent weeks, Taliban militants have stepped up high profile attacks on high ranking Afghan officials. Last week, twin blasts outside the Ministry of Defense in Kabul killed several high ranking officials, including General Abdul Raziq, the ministry’s senior commander, Kabul’s intelligence chief, and a local district police chief. Sharif Faiz, deputy head of the Afghan National Army Support Brigade, was killed in the second blast, as a suicide bomber targeted first responders. The successful attacks on high profile targets are a costly blow to Afghan forces. Training and equipping Afghan officers is no easy task and takes years of training. Consider that fact that the United States has been engaged in the conflict in Afghanistan for the last 15 years, but even the first second lieutenant would not yet be promotable to general and staff ranks. To plug gaps and capabilities for Afghan forces during the early onset of the conflict, U.S. forces relied heavily on militia and former soviet mujahideen commanders to fill the role of company grade officers — with warlords serving as generals. The program failed as many militia commanders were incompetent, illiterate, and personal interests at times trumped national interests. The current model requires Afghan officers to graduate from the Afghan...

  The United Nations has warned of a growing threat to aid workers in Afghanistan where it says millions of people are in urgent need of life-saving assistance. “I am deeply concerned that aid workers are being targeted, with 93 of our colleagues abducted since the beginning of this year,” said Stephen O'Brien, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, in speaking with reporters in Kabul at the end of a visit to Afghanistan. “All parties are obliged to uphold the principles of international humanitarian law and ensure the protection of civilians and aid workers,” he said, without giving further details or identifying the nationalities of the abductees. More aid needed O'Brien also called on the international community to urgently increase its support to around 1.1 million people who are expected to be displaced internally and cross borders by the end of the year. O’Brien said the humanitarian community in Afghanistan urgently needs $150 million to respond to the “life-saving” needs for the next four months in the wake of the increase in numbers of new people on the move. “The displaced families and communities are a mix of refugees returning from Pakistan and hundreds of thousands of people who have been forced from their homes this year due to the conflict in Afghanistan,” said O’Brien. The U.N. says that more than 5,000 displaced Afghans are returning from Pakistan every day, adding to the challenges facing the humanitarian community. Afghan refugees Pakistan hosts around three million Afghan refugees, nearly half of them living there illegally, who are currently facing pressure from authorities to return to Afghanistan. O’Brien said that alarming levels of malnutrition affect 2.7 million people in Afghanistan, including 1 million children under the age of 5. He urged governments, donors and humanitarian groups to do more to tackle the crisis to prevent more than 126,000 children from dying this year. “Only 35 percent of children with severe acute...

  India and Afghanistan on Wednesday called for an end to all sponsorship, support and sanctuaries to militants, including those who have committed violence in the two countries. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani did not name Pakistan in their remarks, though they have previously. The neighboring country has been accused of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir. India offered a fresh $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan for building capacity in education, health, agriculture, energy and infrastructure, said a joint statement by the two sides. They also signed an extradition treaty. Kabul has cultivated closer ties with New Delhi in recent years as a balance to Pakistan. Ghani arrived in New Delhi on Wednesday for a two-day visit. Modi and Ghani also reaffirmed their resolve to strengthen their security and defense cooperation, but did not give any details. India already has donated three multirole Mi-35 helicopters to Afghanistan. The two sides also stressed that fast implementation of an agreement among Afghanistan, India and Iran to develop the Chabahar port in Iran would increase connectivity within the region. India said in May it would invest up to $500 million to develop the Iranian port, which India plans to use for trade with Afghanistan in the absence of a land route through Pakistan. This article originally appeared on www.voanews.com, September 14, 2016. Original link.  Disclaimer: Views expressed in the article are not necessarily supported by CRSS.

  Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sharply criticized new authorities giving the U.S. military greater freedom to fight Taliban insurgents, saying they were a further erosion of the country's sovereignty. In an interview, Karzai, who continues to exert considerable behind-the-scenes influence on Afghan politics, also called on the Islamist militant movement to be more realistic in demands that have hampered progress in peace talks. His comments on American involvement in the war were at odds with the government of his successor, President Ashraf Ghani, which has welcomed U.S. political and military support. "How could the U.S. president authorize U.S. troops to launch attacks on their own in Afghanistan?" Karzai said, referring to Barack Obama's June decision to alter the rules of engagement for the American military. "Don't we have a government here? Aren't we a sovereign country?" The new authorities, which U.S. officials say were agreed with the Afghan government, affect ground operations where U.S. troops provide support to Afghan forces as well as air combat, and Karzai has long been critical of U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan, be they by fighter jets, helicopters or drones. He would ban them altogether, even though the Afghan armed forces, struggling to contain the insurgency, say they could not cope without support from the skies and want more. The former leader's opposition reflects broader unease among Afghans who believe innocent people have been killed in air attacks targeting militants, unease that may grow with new powers granted to the U.S. military. The U.S. says its air strikes support Afghan operations and it takes extreme care to avoid civilian casualties, despite incidents such as the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz last year in which 42 people died. Calling Afghanistan the victim of a 21st century version of the "Great Game" between competing powers on the 19th century borders of British India, Karzai...