2 US Special Forces members killed in Afghanistan and 1 wounded

(April 27) Pentagon spokesperson, U.S. Navy Captain Jeff Davis confirmed that two U.S. troops had been killed and one wounded in the Achin District of Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan that borders on Pakistan.

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The casualties were Special Operations Forces that are targeting Islamic State forces in the area. General Nicholson said: "The fight against ISIS-K is important for the world, but sadly, it is not without sacrifice. On behalf of all US forces and our coalition partners, I offer our deepest sympathies to the families, friends and fellow service members of our fallen comrades." ISIS-K refers to the Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan. The "K" stands for Khorasan province.

The Achin Distrist is the primary base of IS in Afghanistan. There have been many joint Afghan-U.S. missions against the group. Earlier this month another U.S. Special Forces member was killed in fighting in the area. The area is also where the U.S. dropped the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) some days ago. The U.S. has refused to issue its own account of casualties caused by the bomb attack. Afghan officials claim to have counted up to a hundred but there is no independent confirmation. IS media have claimed that none were killed! The blast targeted a series of tunnels and caves used by the IS. Apparently they were originally constructed with the help of the CIA to help jihadists fight an Afghan regime supported by the Soviet Union, the Evil Empire. Security forces so far have kept people out of the blast area and the U.S. has not released further information.

Earlier this month, in the capital Kabul, General Nicholson had said: "We're going to keep going until they're defeated in 2017." An offensive against the group began in 2016 together with Afghan security forces. Nicholson claims that group has lost about half of its fighters and about two thirds of its territory. The U.S. believes that the IS has about 600 to 800 fighters mostly formed from other groups including the Pakistani Taliban, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The group claimed responsibility for a recent deadly attack on a hospital in Kabul.

Since the U.S. ceased combat operations and the Afghan government took over combat operations in 2014, U.S. and coalition casualties are less frequent. The U.S., however, has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Some carry out counter-terrorist actions that are separate from the training and advising missions to train the Afghan army and police force, to fight mainly against the Taliban who have been gaining more territory. Recently they carried out an attack on a military base near the city of Mazar e-Sharif that killed more than 140 Afghan soldiers.

The IS Amaq News Agency said that a joint U.S.-Afghan team was forced to abort a landing in Achin as they came under heavy fire. Helicopters were forced to abandon the mission. However, U.S. aircraft then were said to have launched an intensive bombardment of the area that killed one hundred people mostly women and children. None of this has been independently confirmed. It may be mostly made up propaganda but without further investigation it is impossible to know for sure.

The Trump administration is trying to reverse gains not only of the IS but of the Taliban. The war has now lasted about fifteen years and there is no end in sight. Trump campaigned on a pledge not to get the U.S. involved in costly wars that they appear unable to win. Yet his actions have been to have the U.S. become more involved in areas such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. Such policies are bound over time to result in more US casualties. Anonymous Trump administration officials claim the government is carrying out a review and discussions on Afghanistan have revolved around adding 3,000 to 5,000 more troops. In February General Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan said he needed several more thousand troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban.

Since the beginning of the war in 2001, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and over 17,000 wounded. Some observers say the situation is so bad that the number of troops required to turn the tide let alone create stability and security is beyond what would likely be accepted politically. Christine Wormuth, former undersecretary of defense in the Obama government said: "Before you can get to the question of how many troops is enough you have to have clarity on what is the goal. Is the goal to decisively defeat [the Taliban] and make Afghanistan into a viable state (or) is the goal to continue to prop up the government of Afghanistan?" Trump has yet to set out his policy with respect to Afghanistan. No doubt for now he has many more pressing issues such as what to do in North Korea.

US special forces still fighting the Islamic State near site of huge bomb blast in Afghanistan

U.S. troops with their Afghan allies are still battling suspected Islamic State fighters in the area where the massive Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) was dropped last week in eastern Afghanistan, according to a U.S. military official.

The MOAB or GBU-43, Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb was dropped last Thursday from a US MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province on the border with Pakistan. The bombed tunnel-area deep in the mountains was apparently originally built with the help of the CIA to help the jihadists fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan regime.

A full week after U.S. forces dropped the 21,600-pound bomb, U.S. officials released little information about the strike. Security forces continue to block access to the site. Afghan officials have released body counts of from 36 to 96 over the last six days. These reports are not confirmed by U.S. officials as yet. An Afghan security source said that most of those killed were members of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or the Laskar-e-Taliba also based in Pakistan. The Afghan news agency TOLO was also told that alongside many Pakistanis who were killed there were 12 Tajiks and 13 Indian nationals who had joined the Islmic State. The Hindustan Times reported an Afghan security official claimed that 13 IS commanders had been killed at least two from India. There is a lack of independent confirmation of these reports and officials in New Delhi and Kabul did not confirm them. The Amaq News Agency the IS media outlet claimed none of its fighters had been killed. The site is off limits to any independent reporting sources.

The use of the bomb has been condemned by former president Hamid Karzai and the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan. However, the present president claims the bombing was coordinated with Afghan officials. After having fought alongside Afghan forces, U.S. troops have since left but are continuing operations in the border area. U.S. military spokesperson Captain William Salvin said: "Access has been restricted but that's because it's a combat zone. We are in contact with the enemy." He said that he has high confidence that no civilians were killed. Even some Afghan officials are complaining they lack information about the effects of the bomb. One anonymous senior security official said: "We were and we are kept in the dark and still we haven’t been able to go to the site, We are confused ourselves and we wonder what MOAB could have caused." It may be that U.S. officials do not trust many Afghans and are concerned that the Taliban would be tipped off if too many knew. At a meeting of Afghan security council some members told president Ashraf Ghani that the lack of information played directly into the narrative of the IS that in radio broadcasts is claiming none of its members were killed. A recent Islamic State radio broadcast claimed: "We haven't suffered any casualties from this bomb, We are fighting for the sake of God, who is much stronger than this bomb." U.S. Captain Salvin would not comment on claims by Afghan officials that nearly 100 IS fighters were killed by the blast. Salvin said only that U.S. assessments were ongoing and it appeared that the strike collapsed many tunnels, destroyed mines, and "reduced" several nearby structures. He said US troops had used explosives to collapse other tunnel entrances not destroyed by the blast. Local had been warned that there would be operations in the area through drops of leaflets.

Several villages near the site had earlier been abandoned after fighting in the area increased between IS and US-backed Afghan forces. Khan Afzai a local policeman on patrol in a village less than a mile from the bomb site said: "There were daily bombings and fighting. Afghan forces used to fire artillery, bombs were dropped by foreign aircraft, and even Daesh (IS) fired rockets at us and at the villagers." Kate Clark a senior researcher at the Afghan Analysts network said: "The people who'd normally be talking have fled, and there have been very few reports from inside Islamic State territory. The jury's still out on many things with this strike." Some locals have suggested there may even have been prisoners in the complex but since IS first took over the complex in 2015 not much is known about what happens there. The IS fighters are battling not just the Afghan government forces supported by the US but also the rival main Taliban group.

The bombing is used to provide evidence of Trump's resolve to aggressively deal with America's enemies. It also is said to send a message to North Korea. However, it may have increased anti-U.S. feeling in Afghanistan. Many may feel that their country is being used simply as a testing ground for new U.S. weapons. It appears not to have hurt the IS all that much let alone done anything to stop the advance of the Taliban in some areas of Afghanistan. On the appended video, the gender of the bomb is changed to be the Father of All Bombs.

US military officials claim they will defeat Islamic State in Afghanistan in 2017

United States military officials said that US forces in Afghanistan would be upping the fight against ISIS-K or the Islamic State (IS), Khorasan Province branch, and are determined to defeat the group this year.

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U.S. Navy Captain Bill Salvin, spokesperson for the Resolute Support headquarters in the capital Kabul told the Voice of America Afghan service: "Our goal in 2017 is to defeat ISIS-K in Afghanistan." The IS group has taken mountainous areas in the border province of Khorasan. However, the Afghan government claims that attacks have reduced the group's strength from several thousand fighters to under a thousand. The number of districts under IS control has been reduced from ten to less than five.

Salvin claimed: "In 2016, we believed that year began with about 3,000 or so ISIS-K members in about 12 districts in southern Nangarhar," Salvin said. "Right now, we believe there are about 600 ISIS-K members in two or three districts in southern Nangarhar."

Nevertheless, the IS has shown it can launch attacks in Kabul the capital and elsewhere in the country, General John Nicholson the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan told the Senate Armed Services Committee. The IS claimed a recent attack on March 8th on a military hospital in Kabul that killed at least 31 people. General Nicholson has asked that several thousand more U.S. troops be sent to Afghanistan.Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at the Woodrow Willson Center in Washington DC cautioned:"Ultimately, we should applaud U.S. efforts to cut down the presence of IS fighters in Afghanistan. But the broader problem is the ideologies of hate that keep IS strong. Taking aim at the ideological drivers of IS will be very difficult. The Afghanistan-Pakistan region is a magnet for militancy, and there's no reason why the hundreds of IS fighters that have been lost won't be replaced. There are deeper issues that need to be addressed — such as why IS managed to develop a presence in Afghanistan in the first place — and these are issues that can't be addressed by the U.S. military."

Although the extensive combat mission of the U.S. and allies in Afghanistan has long ended there are still about 8,400 U.S. troops left in Afghanistan who aid Afghan forces and the U.S. also provides extensive air support in carrying out cooperative counter-terrorism operations. Captain Salvin said that the U.S. approach in Afghanistan to fighting the IS was two-pronged: "The first is the unilateral U.S. counterterrorism mission called Operation Freedom, and that is where we will conduct the operations against terrorist groups like ISIS-K on our own. The other way that we are attacking ISIS-K is in partnered operations with the Afghan special forces. They have had a great success in fighting ISIS-K, especially over the last month or so."

The Afghan government believes that the Trump administration will grant General Nicholson's request for several thousand more U.S. troops. The Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani said: "We stand confident that the new U.S. administration under President [Donald] Trump will remain strategically engaged and continue its support." Captain Salvin predicted that in 2017 the U.S. together with the Afghans would defeat the IS: "We believe that they are stronger going into 2017 than they were when they finished 2016. So while we do believe it will be a challenging year, we believe that the Afghan forces will be successful, and we will be here to be their partners."

It took some time before the U.S. even admitted that the IS was operating in Afghanistan. Subsequently, the Afghan government announced at least twice in 2016 that they had achieved "total victory" over the IS. The group is often temporarily driven from an area only to reappear quite soon. The group often relocates when there is an offensive against them allowing most to escape.

The talk of defeating the IS ignores the fact that the main rebel group in Afghanistan are the Taliban and they are capturing more and more areas. Most recently the Taliban captured the key district of Sangin in the southern province of Helmand. A U.S. spokesperson played down the development:A spokesman for the American military, Capt. William K. Salvin, played down the development, saying Afghan security forces were still in the district and had merely moved its seat of government. “They repositioned the district center,” he said. “This move to a new district center has been planned for some time.

The Taliban overran government offices in the city of Sangin. The area was handed over to Afghan forces back in 2013 after a battle that saw more U.S. and British marines killed than in any other district in Afghanistan. The present takeover has taken place in spite of an extensive U.S. bombing campaign and the support of U.S. Special Operations soldiers. The Islamic State is a much lesser problem than the Taliban which is occupying more and more territory in many parts of Afghanistan especially the south.

18 civilians claimed killed by US drone strike in Afghanistan

U.S. drones attacked an area in eastern Nagarhar Province in Afghanistan where there has been a resurgence of activity by the Islamic State. The UN and some locals claim that at least 15 civilians were killed and another 13 wounded.

Local officials did not describe the drones as specifically American but no one else operates drones in the area.

The main target of the attacks were a house said to belong to a public health employee. The Pentagon had earlier announced that drone strikes in the province had killed 13 members of the Islamic State, a claim repeated by Afghan police but who said that 18 Islamic State (IS) fighters were killed.

Afghan provincial officials said they would send a commission to investigate the attacks. Unlike former president Karzai, President Ghani has had a muted reaction to civilian deaths by U.S. attacks. The investigation could cause the Pentagon to be more up front about verifying the results of their attacks. Just over a week ago a U.S. airstrike designed to rescue Afghan police ended by blowing up their checkpoint and killing eight.

A Guardian article speaks of the UN and locals saying that drone strikes in Nangarhar targeting Islamic State fighters instead killed at least 15 civilians and injured another 13. The area targeted is under IS control. The report also mentions the target as a house and claims that the inhabitants were sleeping after having welcomed home a tribal elder who had returned from his hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The UN had a high level delegation visiting Jalalabad, the capital of Nagarhar province. The UN report was issued as conflicting reports were still coming out.

The U.S. acknowledged that it had conducted the drone attacks but would not discuss any details "because we are still reviewing all materials related to the strike". Nangarhar officials said at first that the strike had killed 18 IS militants including a key commander. However, a parliamentarian from Nangarhar claimed that the victims were civilians who had travelled from surrounding areas to welcome the elder back home.

The Islamic State appeared in public in Nangarhar as early as May of 2015. The province is virtually the only place in Afghanistan where it has established a foothold. Their leader in Afghanistan was killed in an airstrike in July and the group appears to be on the defensive. However, just over the past week, they have recaptured southern areas of the province including Achin where the drone strike took place. While the Afghan ministry of defense promised an investigation, the UN wanted an independent investigation.

The Euronews claims that at least 18 people were killed but that other sources put the death toll higher. The report also claims the target was a house in which people were sleeping after welcoming a local elder back from Mecca. One of the wounded Hafzullah Khan said: “The bombing happened at 3.00am and I was asleep, I did not know what happened, I just heard a big blast.” The report claims that some IS fighters were among the dead.

It is almost exactly a year since U.S. airstrikes hit a hospital in Kunduz operated by Doctors Without Borders. The attacks killed 42, including patients and doctors. Both the U.S. and Afghan governments refused calls from Doctors Without Borders and others for an independent investigation.

Taliban mounting strong attacks in Afghanistan but Islamic State recruiting

The Afghan Taliban are able to mount serious attacks in Afghanistan. Most recently they carried out deadly attacks on the Afghan parliament and in the northern city of Kunduz.

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As the appended video shows, the attack on parliament shattered windows and filled the parliamentary chamber with smoke disrupting the confirmation of the new defense minister Masoom Stanikzai.

The parliament is supposed to be the most secure building in the country. The Taliban want to show both the Kabul government and their competitors the Islamic State just how powerful they are. They also have captured areas in the northern province of Kunduz and attacked Kunduz city. The Taliban has warned the Islamic State to stay out of Afghanistan. .

The Kunduz Police Chief Gen. Nasrati said Char Darah was just one of many districts lost in the last few days. Although reinforcements had arrived Kabul was unable to stop the violence he said. General Wahid Taqat, a former member of Afghan intelligence said that the government had simply lost control of many areas and hasnt the power to strike back. Afghan military expert, Jawed Kohistani, said:"The lack of coordination within the military, the central government's failure in the provinces and the cooperation with terrorist networks are the main reasons for the current volatile security situation."He also criticized the government for trying to make deals with Pakistani intelligence. To add to this unstable situation the Islamic State appears to be actively recruiting in Afghanistan and attempting to gain a foothold in the country.

Some time ago, General John F. Campbell the commander of the international forces in Afghanistan said that IS was using a sophisticated social media campaign to attract Taliban fighters not only in Afghanistan but Pakistan as well. The group points to the lack of success so far of the Taliban to overthrow the Kabul government after many years of battle. They point to their own success in seizing huge swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.

The situation has progressed to the point where there are even reports of some militants fighting each other in the east of Afghanistan. One report from two anonymous commanders of the Taliban claims that the group is splintering into three parts. One group remains loyal to the original Taliban such as those who attacked the parliament and Kunduz recently. There are also a group who want to make peace with the Kabul government and lay down their arms. A third group has joined the Islamic State and is aiming at upping the pace of fighting against Kabul. While these splits might seem to give the advantage to Kabul over a divided opposition, it seems to have made the situation worse as two of the groups compete with each other to see who can fight best against Kabul. There are other divisions with those opposed to Kabul including separate Taliban groups based in Pakistan.

A senior Afghan intelligence officer told reporters:"The cracks in the ranks of Taliban began late last year with the emergence of Daesh in the region. The first big defection [from Taliban] to Daesh was senior Taliban commander Abdul Rauf Khadin ... who was killed in a joint operation with U.S. forces a few months ago."Even back in January the group announced the creation of a council for Khorasan a historic name for territory that includes present day Pakistan and Afghanistan. While Kabul has stepped up the pace of peace talks with one group of Taliban, the talks seem doomed given that other groups not only refuse to join the process but step up their attacks and take over more territory.

American analysts say that Islamic State in Afghanistan is just starting to get organized in Afghanistan. However, there is one area in the north where their presence is already being felt. As in other countries such as Libya, Islamic State is introducing foreign fighters into local areas. In a northern area in Afghanistan, local villagers and officials say that the militants are much more brutal and vicious than the Taliban. The fighters come from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikstan. Mullah Abdul Rasheed said that a village elder was shot dead by militants while he was praying in a mosque and two of his cousins were killed in a gun battle with the militants. He said that he fled his village with others leaving everything behind. He said that the fighters had killed a person in a neighbouring village and dragged the body behind a motorcycle. In some villages they have already raised the black flag of Daesh (Islamic State) he said.