[ToloNews] Government figures reveal that at least 14 provinces have witnessed heavy battles between government forces and the Taliban ...Arabic for students... over the last few weeks. Figures collected by TOLOnews indicate that at least 150 security force members have bit the dust in Taliban attacks in recent weeks.
But acting Defense Minister Assadullah Khalid said the Taliban’s casualties have been "higher."
"The enemy’s casualties are many times higher, especially from the time when we are in 'active defensive,'" Khalid said. "We are committed to any voice on peace... We have respected the reduction in violence week but it was the Taliban who intensified violence following the reduction in violence week and increased their attacks."
Khalid reiterated that despite the Taliban's increased attacks, "our voice is the voice of peace and of ceasefire, especially to respect the Ramadan month and fight the COVID-19."
The Office of the National Security Council this weekend said the Taliban has conducted an average of 55 attacks per day since the signing of the peace deal with the United States in Doha on February 29.
The ONSC front man Javid Faisal at a presser said that the Taliban conducted 2,804 attacks from the beginning of March to April 19, adding the group "does not remain committed to the reconciliation process that will help the country to end decades of war."
[KhaamaPress] The Taliban ...the Pashtun equivalent of men... group has for the first time appointed a Shia (Shi’ite) Hazara ...a grouping of Dari-speaking people of Sino-Tibetan descent inhabiting Afghanistan and Pakistain. They are predominantly Shia Moslems and not particularly warlike, which makes them favored targets... as the shadow district chief of the group, a move which is seen as an attempt to attract the support of Hazara community in the country.
The appointment comes as a surprise as the group persecuted the minority Hazara people on large scale after gaining power in mid-90s, particularly after massacring the Hazara people in Mazar-e Sharif city, the capital of Balkh in 1998.
Meanwhile, ...back at the game, the Babe headed for second base. He almost made it. Then Sheila slapped him.... the experts have said the group is now trying to win over and recruit from the Shiite Hazara community ahead of intra-Afghan peace talks.
"The Taliban has never been an inclusive force; their leadership in Quetta and Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistain's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire... and their political office in Doha are run by Sunni Pashtuns. They have had token Tajik commanders in the field, particularly in the north, but now they are trying to include some token Shia Hazaras in the mix," said Sabir Ibrahimi, an Afghan security analyst and research associate at New York University’s Centre on International Co-operation, was quoted as saying in a report published by UAE-based The National.
Ali Yawar Adili, a researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network told The National "In recent years, the Taliban have recruited from other communities like Tajiks and Uzbeks. They seemed to feel a gap in their effort to portray themselves as a nationwide movement due to the lack of any significant influence among ethnic Hazaras."
The Taliban group last week released a video of Mawlavi Mahdi, the newly-appointed shadow district chief of the group for northern Sar-e Pul province.
Introduced as a Shi’ite brother by Taliban, Mahdi urges Hazaras, who have faced repeated attacks from the Taliban over the past two decades, to join the group in fighting against "Jewish and Christian invaders", referring to the United States.
[Sudan Tribune] U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Donald Booth said he tried to convince the SPLM-N al-Hilu to engage in peace talks with the Sudanese government and stressed that he told them that his country would support their demand for self-determination.
Booth made this statement in a web event on Sudan and U.S. relations organized by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Colombia University on Friday 24 April.
Speaking about the ongoing peace talks in Juba, Ambassador Booth said progress has been achieved in the discussions between the government and the gangs except for the SPLM-N al-Hilu and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur.
He said the SPLM-N al-Hilu has insisted that the transitional government should declare that Sudan would be a secular state while the government that the secularism and the role of Sharia (Islamic law) should be settled by the constitutional conference.
"They (the government) have pointed out that they had made changes to many laws: they have bravely increased religious freedom, restricted the application of Sharia law but that sort of retail approach has not satisfied the SPLM-N al-Hilu faction," he said.
In return, in the SPLM-N al-Hilu they have pushed the idea of self-determination "which in effect means independence," he added.
"I have tried to convince them that is something even the United States or others will support," he stressed.
Al-Hilu conducted a split in the SPLM-N because Malik Agar the then leader of the unified group and the Movement’s secretary-general Yasir Arman who was also the chief negotiator refused his request to demand the inclusion of the self-determination in the talks with the former Islamist regime of Omer al-Bashir.
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04/29/2020 00:00 ||
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[THEBAGHDADPOST] The Iraqi parliament has called for closer cooperations between Kurdistan Region's Peshmerga fighters and Iraqi forces to counter the ISIS terrorist group in Kirkuk.
The first deputy speaker of the parliament, Hassan al-Kaabi, warned in a statement on Tuesday that the jihadist group poses a threat to Kirkuk's security, noting that there should be cooperations between Erbil and Baghdad to ensure that the holy warriors could not infiltrate from one province into another.
Kaabi made the remarks while chairing a meeting which was attended by the committee of defense and security as well as several other military commanders.
The Peshmerga fighters were forced to withdraw from the disputed Kurdish areas after the Iraqi army and pro-Iranian IMIS militias overran the disputed territories in late 2017 in retaliation to an independence referendum held by the Kurdistan Region.
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#2
^"These are difficult times and we must brace ourselves for the times ahead that promise to be no less difficult," Gantz said. "For seven decades, we faced tangible enemies who sought to destroy us, and in doing so, helped define our shared ethos - an ethos of existential struggle.
"Now we face an unfamiliar foe, which doesn’t tell us apart --Jews, Arabs, Druze, and Circassian, Ultra-Orthodox, religious, and secular, people on the Right and the Left," he said. "It poses an enormous human and medical challenge, and in the process shares a valuable lesson about social responsibility: namely, that we are all our brothers' keepers. It is our solidarity and commonality of purpose that guarantee us victory. It is our communal spirit and sense of mutual responsibility that help us touch eternity."
[Rudaw] Units of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are not operating in areas of northern Syria under Ottoman Turkish occupation, contrary to Ankara’s claims, the Kurdish-led force said Monday.
The Ottoman Turkish army and its Syrian proxies launched Operation Peace Spring in October 2019 against the SDF in northern Syria, claiming the force posed a threat to Ottoman Turkish national security.
Ankara planned to establish a so-called safe zone along the Syrian side of the The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
Continued on Page 49
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04/29/2020 01:38 ||
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[ALMASDARNEWS] The General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces issued a statement on Monday that warned the U.S. against any moves deemed as an act of "adventurism, harassment and provocation" towards Tehran.
Deploring "high-risk behaviors, which make shipping [in regional waters] insecure", the statement says that while the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has never initiated any tension or conflict in the region, it would swiftly come to the defense of its territorial integrity.
"Any act of adventurism, harassment and provocation will be met with the Iranian Armed Forces’ decisive response, and hostile forces, including the U.S., will be responsible for the consequences."
The Iranian Armed Forces statement further emphasized that its new military capabilities are able to deter any foreign threat in the Persian Gulf region.
The strongly-worded statement lambastes the "establishment of military bases and extra-regional coalitions led by the U.S." as wreaking havoc and undermining security, while urging the military forces of the U.S. and its allies to be withdrawn from the region.
While calling out Washington for providing "false accounts of their provocative behaviors" while navigating Iran’s territorial waters, the Armed Forces advised the US and its allies to abide by Iran’s regulations as well as international rules.
The developments followed Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... ’s recent threat that US Navy ships would shoot "out of the water" Iranian gunboats that sail too close to American vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Trump’s twitter remarks came after a US Navy statement alleged that 11 boats of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had carried out "dangerous and harassing approaches" in regard to six American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.
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#Hezbollah Deputy Secretary Sheikh Naim Qassem on al Nour radio: The resistance is ready to face any aggression. #Israel knows what happened at the border (April 20 #Lebanon-Israel border incident) and who is behind it. pic.twitter.com/agMufaOBfo
Interesting to see the IRGC boosting Qaani's profile as a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. He was little known to most in the public before taking over the helm after Qassem Soleimani's death. https://t.co/T6u78Drw2K
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Arabic for 
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
