Afghan forces still battling Taliban over southern district

Monday’s attack came as Taliban fighters and government forces battled for control of a strategic district in the southern province of Helmand after it was overrun by insurgents, delivering a serious blow to the government’s thinly spread and exhausted forces. The US Department of Defense has said that the goal of the deployment is to train local security forces.

However, Helmand’s deputy governor, Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar, denied the claim.

The stationing of foreign troops in Afghanistan is merely a symbolic gesture to show the worldwide community cares about Afghanistan without any real intent to fight the Taliban, analysts told Sputnik.

In addition, a trilateral meeting between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States also took place on the sidelines of Heart of Asia conference in which the countries expressed their full commitment to enabling an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned political reconciliation process that promoted a dialogue between Afghan government and groups of Taliban on the future of Afghanistan and the cessation of violence. Are U.S. or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces doing anything else to support Afghan government forces in that area?

They have a mandate to “train, assist and advise” their Afghan counterparts, who are now effectively fighting a battle-hardened Taliban alone. Before that, British and American forces struggled for years to hold on to Sangin.

The troops, the British Ministry of Defence said in a statement, were “part of the UK’s ongoing contribution to NATO’s Resolute Support Mission”, the training, advisory, assistance and counterterror mission in Afghanistan.

“They were defeated even after the presence of thousands of troops and the same will happen with these few hundred troops, this means nothing else but a shameful humiliation for them”.

Robust and meaningful strategies must be adopted and this is why Pakistan brokered talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. He said that the restoration of the peace process was not only on the interest of Afghanistan, but was equally beneficial of the entire region. Afghan News Agency on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Syed Ibrar Hussain on Thursday said that the second round of peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban would begin soon and Islamabad was ready to cooperate with the process.

Earlier this week, a suicide bomber attacked a joint Afghan-NATO convoy near Bagram airbase near Kabul, killing six foreign soldiers and wounding three others. The Taliban claimed responsibility. The airport in Kandahar has for years been a major hub for operations of worldwide forces, most of whom had withdrawn from Afghanistan by 2014-end.