The SIGAR report, compiled based on interviews of at least 30 former officials, including those close to Ghani, suggests a little over $500,000 million in cash on board the helicopters. Significantly, the fund that Ghani took away was not the government fund but was the leftover amount that the UAE government had provided to Ghani to support his 2019 presidential campaign.
Western embassies and aid agencies are scrambling to evacuate their civilian staff from embassies from Afghanistan, with the United States and the United Kingdom rushing additional troops to the country after the Taliban captured Kandahar, Helmand, Herat, and Ghazni, raising fears of an immediate collapse of the Afghan government
The Taliban Thursday captured Ghazni, a strategic center of Ghazni province, just 150 km off Kabul, bringing the total number of provincial centers under their control to ten, in a week-long offensive sweeping across northern Afghanistan. Herat city, the last remaining stronghold of the government in the west, was also breached by insurgents
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday morning paid a visit to the besieged northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, accompanied by powerful warlord Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum and hundreds of special forces, as the Taliban took control of eight provincial centers, including six in a week’s time
The Afghan government in Kabul could collapse within the next three months, US intelligence officials said in a newly revised assessment, as the Taliban continued to make exponential gains in the war-torn country
The International Red Committee of The Red Cross (ICRC) has said it treated over 4,042 weapon-wounded patients at 15 health facilities in the last ten days alone, indicating the intensity of the recent violence where the country’s health infrastructure has come under intense pressure
Taliban insurgents are going after what is left of main pockets of government resistance in northern Afghanistan as they intensify their attacks on Balkh and Takhar, the two key northern provinces which have resisted the Taliban offensive so far
The Taliban made a major push into big Afghan cities this week, resulting in intense air bombing campaigns from the Afghan Air Force and the US forces in an effort to slow down the Taliban’s offensives
The Taliban on Saturday claimed the capture of the strategically important city Sheberghan, capital of the northern Jowzjan province
The Taliban on Friday assassinated the director of Afghanistan’s Government Information Media Center, days after a failed bid on the country’s defense minister
Afghan special forces have launched a major offensive operation in Lashkargah, the besieged provincial center of the southern province of Helmand, as thousands of soldiers from special forces rushed to the city
At least eight people were killed and twenty were wounded when gunmen stormed the house of Afghan Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi, just minutes after a powerful car bomb exploded there in the Afghan capital, Kabul
Until a few days ago, it was uncertain if Herat, a western Afghan city encircled by insurgents from three sides, would survive the Taliban onslaught or not
As Afghanistan is plunged in a civil war between government forces and the marauding Taliban, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said at least 1,677 civilians were killed and 3,644 were wounded in the first six months of this year, a whopping 80 percent increase in relation to the same period last year
Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan was attacked last night when at least rockets hit its airfield, bringing all fight operations to a halt
A United Nations office in western Afghanistan came under fire and one of its Afghan guards was killed and other guards were injured as fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan security forces intensified
