Afghanistan

The United States is set to formally restart peace talks with the Taliban insurgency, nearly three months after President Donald Trump abruptly suspended the year-long process aimed at finding a political settlement to the war in Afghanistan.

Lawyers representing victims of the Afghanistan conflict on Wednesday urged the International Criminal Court to allow a war crimes investigation that would include scrutinizing the actions of U.S. forces. ICC judges in April rejected the request of prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to examine atrocities allegedly committed in the conflict between 2003 and 2004, including by U.S. troops, Afghan forces and the Taliban.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Monday that she supported an extension of German participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Over 1,000 German troops are currently stationed there.

Thousands of supporters of a leading presidential candidate in Afghanistan rallied Friday in the capital, Kabul, demanding election officials halt the ongoing vote recount process to prevent alleged electoral fraud.

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.