Afghanistan

A UN worker was killed and two people were injured when their vehicle was attacked in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has hosted leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency and discussed efforts aimed at finding a negotiated settlement to the Afghan war.

A UN worker was killed and two people were injured when their vehicle was attacked in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday.

The 2019 Global Terrorism Index, published on November 20 by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, shows that the number of deaths attributed to the Taliban rose by nearly 71 percent in 2018 to 6,103, and accounted for 38 percent of all terror-related deaths globally. The Taliban overtook Islamic State (IS) as the deadliest terrorist group, with deaths attributed to IS falling by almost 70 percent, to 1,328.

[…] Independent Election Commission (IEC) spokesman Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi said on November 13 that the results will not be announced the next day as planned due to "technical problems and other issues."

A frontrunner in Afghanistan’s recently held presidential election called Sunday for immediately halting a recount of the vote, casting aspersions on the integrity and legitimacy of the already delayed electoral process. Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah made the demand a day after unilaterally withdrawing his team’s election observers from the recounting process ahead of Thursday’s scheduled announcement of the preliminary results from the September 28 polls.

Attacks carried out by Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan were twice as effective in the third quarter of 2019 than they were earlier in the year, according to a leading oversight authority on Afghanistan that reports to the United States Congress.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary forces have "committed summary executions and other grave abuses without accountability" -- including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and attacks on health-care facilities.

A senior official in Afghanistan announced Tuesday that under a “new” peace plan, the government will not seek any more unconditional negotiations with the Taliban and will require that a cease-fire last at least one month before initiating any peace process with the insurgent group.

U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has held talks with Afghan leaders in the capital, Kabul, his first trip back since U.S. President Donald Trump ended talks with the Taliban aimed at ending America's longest war.