Tag: NATO

NATO to expel 7 Russian diplomats over ‘ex-spy poisoning’

NATO became the latest entity to dismiss Russian diplomats over Moscow’s alleged role in a nerve agent attack against a former double agent in Salisbury, as the trans-Atlantic organisation announced on Tuesday that seven officials would have their accreditation withdrawn. At a press conference in Brussels, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the suspected nerve agent …

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March 28, 2018

US Defence Secretary Mattis pays surprise visit to Kabul

US Defence Secretary James Mattis arrived in the Afghan capital on Tuesday on a surprise visit to meet Afghan authorities and commanders of NATO and US forces in the country. The visit by the Pentagon chief comes at a time when the Afghan government is actively looking to broker peace talks with the Taliban. Mattis …

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March 13, 2018

US drone strike kills 2 IS militants in Afghanistan

Two militants of the Islamic State (IS) group were killed in a drone strike by NATO and US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province. “The strike occurred in Bandaar locality of Achin district on Friday,” the provincial government said on Saturday, adding no civilian was hurt in the attack. The IS group, which emerged in …

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February 11, 2018

Deception complete

In a chronically volatile country, shock has given way to despair in Kabul and much to the consternation of the world. Quite totally incredible was the degree of deception of the Taliban, or more accurately its Haqqani network, as it perpetrated one of the worst attacks in recent memory in the capital of Afghanistan. Saturday’s …

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January 30, 2018

Intercontinental outrage

Barely a week after 2,000 clerics in Pakistan advanced a fatwa to warn Islamist fundamentalists that terrorist attacks are “un-Islamic” anywhere in the word, the militants have greeted the imprimatur with a deadly strike, this time on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. Though ISIS has been suspected, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the suicide …

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January 23, 2018

67 Afghan security force members freed from Taliban captivity

Afghan security forces have freed 67 soldiers and police officials from a Taliban-run jail in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, officials said on Saturday. The rescue operation was launched in Baghram district and 20 of the freed hostages were taken to neighbouring Kandahar province. The remaining 47 would be taken there “soon”, the Afghan Defence Ministry was …

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January 20, 2018

Taliban asks world community to urge US to quit Afghanistan

The Afghan Taliban has pressed the world community to ask the US and its Western allies to leave Afghanistan instead of asking the group to stop its armed struggle. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid’s comment came amid the latest call for peace talks by the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan, China and Pakistan at a trilateral dialogue …

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January 1, 2018

5 IS militants killed in Afghan air raids

At least five Islamic State militants were killed in an airstrike in eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, the Special Forces said on Monday. As a result of an airstrike launched by Afghan Special Operation Forces in district Dih Bala, Nangarhar province on Sunday evening, five militants from the IS died and two IS fighters wounded, …

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January 1, 2018

Pakistan’s delicate dance

In retrospect, 9/11 was the defining moment of the re-engagement and recalibration of the US-Pak dynamics that till then were nestled in favour of Pakistan as a ‘major non-NATO ally’. After the Cold War ended in the 1990s, Pakistan had fallen off the immediate radar as Washington was busy meddling with the affairs of the …

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December 20, 2017

Woman killed, 4 injured in Kandahar car bomb attack

An Afghan woman was killed and four civilians wounded when a suicide car bomb struck a NATO-led coalition forces’ convoy in Kandahar city on Sunday, an official said. The blast occurred around 2 p.m. local time in Police District 5 of Kandahar city, capital of southern province of Kandahar, along a road which connects the …

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December 17, 2017

US to sell Patriot missiles to Poland

The US State Department has approved a possible sale of the Patriot Anti-Missile System to Poland at an estimated cost of $ 10.5 billion, said the Pentagon. The proposed sale will increase the Polish military’s defensive capabilities without altering the basic military balance in the region, Xinhua news agency quoted the Pentagon as saying in …

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November 18, 2017

Pakistan rejects NATO secretary general remarks on Taliban bases

Pakistan on Thursday rejected NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recent remarks that Taliban still have bases in Pakistan, which he had described as a “big challenge” to efforts aimed at bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan. “We have to address the big challenge that the Taliban, the insurgents are working also out of bases in …

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November 10, 2017

Starting to develop much better relationship with Pakistan: Trump

US President Donald Trump has said that he has started to develop a much better relationship with Pakistan, a day after Pakistani forces rescued an American-Canadian family from the Haqqani terror network. American citizen Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle along with their three children were rescued from the Haqqanis on Thursday after …

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October 14, 2017

‘India can be a natural ally’

Linas Linkevicius,Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, has been honoured with a number of decorations including the Order of the Polar Star,Grand Cross (Sweden,2015), the Grand Cross of Commander of the Order of Vytautas the Great (2015),the Golden Sign of Honour (Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists, 2014, Cross of Commander of the Order …

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October 9, 2017

Trans-Atlantic confusion

Europeans watched with disbelief, just like the Americans of both political parties and the rest of the world, as Donald Trump powered ahead with his rhetoric to win the Republican Party nomination for their presidential candidate and then defeated Hillary Clinton to become the President of the United States. After the devastation of World War …

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September 16, 2017

Six killed in suicide attack near Kabul bank

At least six persons were killed and nine injured on Tuesday in a suicide attack near a bank in Kabul, Afghan police said. The attack took place at around 10 a.m. near a New Kabul Bank branch in a heavily protected area about 300 metres from NATO’s Resolute Support Mission Headquarters, the US Embassy and …

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August 29, 2017

Trump in South Asia

Donald Trump’s foreign policy statement, riveted as it is to Afghanistan, intrinsically marks no break with the Bush/Obama years. And yet, far from scaling down the presence of US troops, he intends to intensify the footprint of the military. Could this be the White House response to the renewed Taliban offensive? The immediate response of …

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August 25, 2017