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WASHINGTON, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Mi-17 helicopter has been a "game changer" in the movement of Afghan forces and supplies in the fight against Taliban insurgents, the United States Army general in charge of American operations and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said. "I think they (Mi-17) have been a force multiplier for the special operating forces and for the conventional forces, the army and the police, they have been mostly moving forces and providing resupply," US Army Gen. John F. Campbell told a gathering of reporters inside the Pentagon briefing room Thursday. "I think that...

Three Afghan soldiers who vanished during training in Massachusetts last month and resurfaced days later at the Canadian border said they want asylum because returning to the homeland they are sworn to defend could mean death at the hands of the Taliban. “They catch us, they kill us,” Maj. Jan Mohammad Arash, 48, told the Boston Globe of the Taliban, the terrorist government driven into exile by coalition forces. “They tip those who kill us.” Arash and the others, Capt. Mohammad Nasir Askarzada and Capt. Noorullah Aminyar, say the lives of their relatives back home have been threatened. The soldiers...

So the five Afghan soldiers who went missing from two separate U.S. military bases are now all accounted for and apparently headed back to their home country. Feel safer now? Don't. The Pentagon, State Department and Department of Homeland Security would like this story to be over and done. (Just like they wanted the White House "fence-jumper" story to be buried. But then we found out he didn't just jump the fence; he also overpowered a Secret Service agent, burst through the halls and invaded the East Room wielding a knife.) Here are my nagging questions about another hushed-up national...

So the five Afghan soldiers who went missing from two separate U.S. military bases are now all accounted for and apparently headed back to their home country. Feel safer now? Don’t. The Pentagon, State Department and Department of Homeland Security would like this story to be over and done. (Just like they wanted the White House “fence-jumper” story to be buried. But then we found out he didn’t just jump the fence; he also overpowered a Secret Service agent, burst through the halls and invaded the East Room wielding a knife.)

A senior adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that Afghanistan will sign a deal Tuesday to allow American soldiers to remain in the country past the end of the year. John Podesta, speaking to a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said he didn't know if newly inaugurated President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai would be the official signing the deal for Afghanistan. Podesta said he would sign it on behalf of the U.S. The deal will allow about 10,000 American troops to stay in the country after the international combat mission ends on Dec. 31.

Last week, when I was being shown around Embraer's new U.S.-assembled A-29 Super Tucano with a group of journalists, the first thing that caught my eye was a big covered something sticking out of each wing. In an age of remote control drones and smart bombs, that couldn't possibly be a machine gun, could it? It sure enough was said our Embraer guide. The A29, in a throwback to the days of mano a mano air combat, has a single .50 caliber gun in each wing, although not the same Browning model used in just about every U.S.-made aircraft that...

U.S. Army Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl was described as a hero by President Obama in a White House Rose Garden ceremony this past summer. This was nothing more than a dishonest stage-managed public relations stunt featuring the president and Bergdahl's grateful parents. Against strong objections from some U.S. military advisers, the president released five dangerous senior Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl. Paul Sperry of the Hoover Institution recently wrote an authoritative article on Bergdahl in the New York Post. This has “become a political powder keg for President Obama,” he said. The headline of his piece —...

An A-10 Thunderbolt II banks after a strafing run on Aug. 21, 2014, during the Red Flag-Alaska 14-3 exercise at the Yukon Training Area, Alaska. Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. An Indiana Air National Guard unit that flies the Cold War-era gunships, known as Warthogs, is planning to deploy about 300 airmen and an unknown number of its aircraft to the U.S. Central Command region early next month, says a Sept. 17...

"India desires a peaceful and stable environment for its development," Modi said, when delivering a speech for the first time as prime minister of India to the annual high-level debate of the UN General Assembly, which entered its fourth day here in New York. Noting that a country's destiny is linked to its neighborhood, Modi said "That is why my government has placed the highest priority on advancing friendship and cooperation with her neighbors." "This includes Pakistan." Modi said he is prepared to engage in a serious bilateral dialogue with Pakistan in a peaceful atmosphere, without the shadow of terrorism,...

Afghanistan will delay paying salaries to hundreds of thousands of civil servants next month because it does not have enough money, a finance ministry official said on Saturday. The acknowledgment that it is now impossible to pay October salaries on time highlights the huge challenges facing new leader Asraf Ghani, who is to be sworn in as president of the violence-torn country on Monday after months of turmoil following a disputed election result.

GHAZNI Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan villagers hanged four captured Taliban militants from a tree on Saturday as security forces battled the insurgents for a sixth day in a district of Ghazni province, an official said. The hangings were carried out after Taliban fighters had killed more than 100 people in the area in the past week, including more than a dozen who were beheaded, according to Ghazni deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi.

Oddly Gillibrand insists on living in the United States instead of in the more progressive Pakistan under the notoriously feminist Sharia law.New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, appointed to her position via Senator Schumer as a favor for a politically connected clan, changed all her political positions and is working hard to pretend that she’s a serious legislator.Mainly by repeating stupid things that other people have said. The most animated speaker was Gillibrand, who condemned opposition to expanding paid family leave across the country.The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act would establish a national paid family and medical leave insurance program...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Militants aligned with ISIS have launched a brutal offensive in Afghanistan alongside Taliban fighters that has left more than 100 people dead, local officials said Friday. Insurgents carrying the black flag of ISIS captured several villages in Ghazni province, according to Deputy Governor Ali Ahmad Ahmadi and Deputy Police Chief Gen. Asadullah Ensafi. Fifteen family members of local police officers were beheaded and at least 60 homes were set ablaze, Ahmadi said.

A major Taliban offensive in eastern Afghanistan over the past week has left up to 100 civilians and security personnel dead, 12 of them beheaded, officials say, as violence worsens with the withdrawal of US-led troops. This northern summer's fighting season has seen Taliban forces advance in several provinces, exploiting a political deadlock in Kabul over disputed presidential election results. The latest series of attacks have focused on Ajristan district in the eastern province of Ghazni, after offensives in recent months in Kandahar, Helmand and Logar provinces. 'The militants beheaded 12 civilians in four villages,' Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, deputy governor...

Militants In Afghanistan, Pakistan Claiming Allegiance To IS by Charles Recknagel Amid fears the Islamic State (IS) extremist group could expand to Afghanistan, there are already signs that some militants in the region are eager to claim affiliation with the group. One sign came this week in a video sent to RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that shows three purported Afghan militants, their faces covered, sitting beneath the black IS battle flag. Speaking in the Ghazni dialect of Pashto, the trio's spokesperson claimed to represent a group called the Islamic Organization of Great Afghanistan and stated his readiness to fight for the IS and...

What's in a name? When you're an Islamist extremist group believed to pose an existential threat to the Western world, everything. In the past few months, we've seen the strange and somewhat revealing saga of what to call the group alternatively referred to as ISIS, ISIL, the Islamic State and Daesh. ........................................................ While there have been reports of groups in Pakistan taking on the Khorasan label, analysts cast doubt that the term is being widely used within Syria to refer to any distinct group. “There have been no jihadis in Syria or [Jabhat al-Nusra] to use that name when referring...

Afghanistan’s two presidential candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah have finally agreed a power-sharing deal, drawing a line under a contested election that has dragged out for almost six months. The agreement, which bestows substantial power on the losing candidate, was finalised on Saturday and made public in a ceremony on Sunday. Parties met late into the night over the past few days to seal the deal before Sunday, when an announcement of the final result of the UN-run election audit is expected. Negotiations, begun in July and finalised earlier this week, were drawn out because Mr Abdullah, the losing...

What was the Islamic State thinking? We know it is sophisticated in its use of modern media. But what was the logic of propagating to the world videos of its beheadings of two Americans (and subsequently a Briton) — sure to inflame public opinion? There are two possible explanations. One is that these terrorists are more depraved and less savvy than we think. They so glory in blood that they could not resist making an international spectacle of their savagery and did not quite fathom how such a brazen, contemptuous slaughter of Americans would radically alter public opinion and risk...

Staff Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl left captivity to be catapulted into an overgrown spotlight of controversy and reckless speculation in May of this year. What should have been a flood of relief to see the American POW return home was replaced with, oddly enough, outrage, mostly from the Right. Angry tweets accused Obama of endangering U.S. soldiers by exchanging five prisoners from Guantanamo for Bergdahl. Twitter filled with frothing accusations against not only the President but the POW himself, as well as his family, who even received death threats. Bergdahl was a Taliban sympathizer, it was decided, and so was his...

American officials have spent billions of tax dollars "setting up projects or programs that the Afghans cannot or will not sustain once international forces" leave Afghanistan, according to a government watchdog. "Afghanistan is a case study in projects and programs set up without considering" whether they can be continued, said John Sopko, Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Sopko's comments came in a speech Friday to a meeting of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. The problem is the sheer magnitude of the reconstruction effort, which is bigger than any ever before undertaken by the U.S. "Last year, the...