AFGHANISTAN
Harvest of Woes
An Afghan bomb squad recently tried but failed to defuse an explosive device in a car parked in an auto repair garage in Kandahar. Sixteen people, including four security officers, perished when the device detonated. Another 38 were wounded, including children.
Interestingly, the car was also filled with suicide vests, suggesting jihadists were planning to use the car in an attack during Ramadan, which ends in mid-June, the New York Times reported.
The incident is one reason why Afghans have grown so frustrated with their leaders in Kabul.
On a recent visit of US officials to the country, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani celebrated his soldiers’ recent progress against the Taliban in cities like Farah. But local Afghans gave the American visitors an earful on the “corruption, cowardice and perhaps worst of all, indifference” of the local military, the Wall Street Journal wrote.
A Congress-mandated report came to a similar conclusion, Newsweek said, citing reports that found that Taliban or Islamic State militants controlled almost 15 percent of the country as of January, more than double the area they controlled three years ago. The Afghan government controlled less than 60 percent of the country.
The Journal also reported that the Pentagon probably also believed things needed to change. President Donald Trump has appointed a new commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Scott Miller, to carry out a new strategy. He will be the ninth US general in a conflict that has raged since shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US.
Meanwhile, the carnage continues. In Farah, the militants remain active despite US-led airstrikes. “The Taliban are moving very fast. If the government does not take serious and speedy action, the province is going to collapse,” Hamidullah, a resident of the city, told Reuters.
A series of blasts killed eight at a cricket match in Jalalabad recently: They occurred after evening prayers on May 18 at a football stadium that was hosting the match to mark the start of Ramadan.
Unfortunately, things could get worse. The Islamic State controls mineral mines in Afghanistan that give the group revenue streams from unlikely goods like baby powder, according to the Intercept.
Imagine the resources that the terrorists might gain if the heroin yield from last year’s bumper crop of opium poppies is as huge as the United Nations has warned it might be. Opium is now the single largest sector in the Afghan economy, eclipsing even the mountains of international aid that have gone to the country, the Telegraph wrote.
It’s a race to see whose state will survive.
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