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WASHINGTON/NANGARHAR, AFGHANISTAN

As the Islamic State terror group loses ground in Iraq and Syria, U.S. and Afghan forces are stepping up their attacks on the group's offshoot in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province.

The U.S. military, in coordination with Afghan security forces, are pounding IS hideouts in Achin, Haskamena and Kot districts with rockets being fired from Jalalabad airfield where U.S. troops are stationed.

The terror group has been active in the eastern region of the country for almost two years.

U.S and Afghan security forces have been conducting ground and air operations against IS militants in the Nangarhar for some time now. The rocket attacks, however, indicate an intensification in the war against IS in the country.

Attaullah Khogyani, Nangarhar provincial government spokesperson told VOA that the rocket attacks on IS hideouts are conducted based on intelligence provided by the Afghan security agencies.

He added that the rocket attacks have targeted key IS members, killing several of them.

Rocket attacks more accurate

Local residents in areas under IS control echo Khogyani's account and have welcomed the move, saying rocket attacks are more accurate and effective. Ground operations by Afghan security forces, they say, result in civilian casualties at times.

Waliullah, a local resident in Deh Bala district said rockets have targeted IS positions only, without causing harm to the civilians in the area.

Airstrikes and ground operations have caused civilian casualties. Rockets fired from the city (U.S. military base) are accurate and do not target civilians, Waliullah told VOA's Afghan service.

U.S. and Afghan security forces have been engaged in joint- counterterrorism operations against IS militants in Nangarhar and neighboring Kunar province.

Drone strike a success

Earlier this year, U.S military and Afghan government promised to eliminate IS in Afghanistan by the end of 2017. Hundreds of IS fighters, including several senior commanders have been killed in recent months.

A suspected U.S. drone strike late Tuesday reportedly targeted a gathering of IS militants in Kunar province, killing 11 fighters, including four key IS commanders.

Pentagon did not immediately confirm Tuesday's drone strike.

The IS terror group has been active in several districts in Nangarhar province. Recently, it has expanded to neighboring mountainous Kunar and Nuristan provinces as well, which share a border with Pakistan, to establish a persistent presence there.

Militant leaders killed

IS has drawn the majority of its members from the Pakistani Taliban fighters, some former Afghan Taliban, and other militants from varied nationalities, including militants from India, Iran, Russia and central Asian neighbors.

In May, the terror group lost Sheikh Abdul Hasib, its leader in Afghanistan. Hasib was killed in a joint U.S. Afghan forces raid in eastern Nangarhar.

His predecessor and founder of IS's branch in Afghanistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan a former Pakistani Taliban commander was also killed in a U.S. drone strike in July of 2016.

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American, Afghan Forces Intensify Anti-IS Fight in Afghanistan - Voice of America

Teenagers from the Afghanistan Robotic House, a private training institute, practice at the Better Idea Organization center, in Herat, Afghanistan.Ahmad Seir AP

After Afghanistan's all-girls robotics team was denied entry to the United States twice in two months, President Donald Trump has reportedly intervened in the case so the six girls and their chaperon can enter the U.S. to attend a competition next week.

The denial of the girls' visas had sparked outrage and puzzled onlookers since Afghanistan, a majority-Muslim nation, is not covered by Trump's travel ban, which the Supreme Court allowed to go into limited effect last month. Teams from countries included in the ban, meanwhile, had gained access to the U.S. The Afghan girls' repeated rejection was also seen as sending the wrong message to the people of Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are fighting Taliban militants who once barred girls from attending school, and undercutting the administration's stated goal of empowering women abroad.

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"We could not be prouder of this delegation of young women who are also scientists they represent the best of the Afghan people and embody the promise that their aspirations can be fulfilled," said Dina Powell, Trump's deputy national security adviser for strategy, in a statement after the reversal.

Politico reports that the president got wind of the case and asked National Security Council officials to see if anything could be done about it. The Department of Homeland Security eventually granted the girls entry to the U.S. on a system known as 'parole,' which will let them stay in the country for up to 10 days, though technically not a visa.

The non-profit that organizes the competition, which will see 163 teams from 157 countries compete this year, cheered the reversal.

I truly believe our greatest power is the power to convene nations, to bring people together in the pursuit of a common goal and prove that our similarities greatly outweigh our differences," First Global president Joe Sestak, a former U.S. Navy admiral and congressman, said in a statement. "That is why I am most grateful to the U.S. Government and its State Department for ensuring Afghanistan, as well as Gambia, would be able to join us for this international competition this year.

Visa applications from Gambia's team were also denied initially, but its members later gained admission.

The decision means the Afghan team will be able to watch their robotwhich sorts balls by colorperform in person, rather than via video link. The girls' presence at the competition will cap what's been an arduous, dramatic journey from their war-torn nation, where young girls are still discouraged from engaging in academic study , especially in hard sciences like math.

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President Trump Intervened So Afghan Girls Robotics Team Can Enter the US - Fortune

For the first time in its countrys history, Afghanistan has swimmers registered to compete at the FINA World Championships. The... Current photo via Mike Lewis/Ola Vista Photography

For the first time in its countrys history, Afghanistan has swimmers registered to compete at the FINA World Championships.

The Afghanistan National Swimming Federation registered two swimmers, Mohammad Ebrahim Rajabi and Hamid Rahmi, for the upcoming FINA World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

This was a dream for all Afghans to have a chance to participate in the World Championships in swimming, said Afghanistan National Swimming Federation Secretary General Sayed Sajad Aghazada in an interview with FINA. Participating in such a great and high level swimming Championships is a chance for the Federation and its swimmers to engage more in the swimming world and show that Afghanistan is now ready to be part of all international events.

He went on to state that Afghanistans goal is to have three Afghan swimmers, 2 men and 1 woman, competing at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Rajabi and Rahmi both hold national records and have participated in the South Asia and Central Swimming Championships. According to FINA, they expressed their belief that swimming playsa crucial role in mobilizing Afghani people and bringing peace to their country.

Rachel has been swimming ever since she can remember. She grew upin the San Francisco Bay Area where she learned to love swimming with the Walnut Creek Aquabears. She took her passion for swimming to Willamette University in Salem, Oregon where she primarily competes in sprint freestyle events. In addition

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Afghanistan to Send First Swimmers to FINA World Championships - SwimSwam

The conflict of interest in this is transparent, said Sean McFate, a professor at Georgetown University who wrote a book about the growth of private armies, The Modern Mercenary. Most of these contractors are not even American, so there is also a lot of moral hazard.

Last month, Mr. Trump gave the Pentagon authority to send more American troops to Afghanistan a number believed to be about 4,000 as a stopgap measure to stabilize the security situation there. But as the administration grapples with a longer-term strategy, Mr. Trumps aides have expressed concern that he will be locked into policies that failed under the past two presidents.

Mr. Feinberg, whose name had previously been floated to conduct a review of the nations intelligence agencies, met with the president on Afghanistan, according to an official, while Mr. Prince briefed several White House officials, including General McMaster, said a second person.

Mr. Prince laid out his views in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May. He called on the White House to appoint a viceroy to oversee the country and to use private military units to fill the gaps left by departed American soldiers. While he was at Blackwater, the company became involved in one of the most notorious episodes of the Iraq war, when its employees opened fire in a Baghdad square, killing 17 civilians.

After selling his stake in Blackwater in 2010, Mr. Prince mustered an army-for-hire for the United Arab Emirates. He has cultivated close ties to the Trump administration; his sister, Betsy DeVos, is Mr. Trumps education secretary.

If Mr. Trump opted to use more contractors and fewer troops, it could also enrich DynCorp, which has already been paid $2.5 billion by the State Department for its work in the country, mainly training the Afghan police force. Mr. Feinberg controls DynCorp through Cerberus Capital Management, a firm he co-founded in 1992.

Mr. McFate, who used to work for DynCorp in Africa, said it could train and equip the Afghan Army, a costly, sometimes dangerous mission now handled by the American military. The appeal to that, he said, is you limit your boots on the ground and you limit your casualties. Some officials noted that under the governments conflict-of-interest rules, DynCorp would not get a master contract to run operations in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Mr. Feinberg declined to comment for this article, and a spokesman for Mr. Prince did not respond to a request for comment.

The proposals Mr. Prince presented, a former American official said, hew closely to the views outlined in his Journal column in essence, that the private sector can operate cheaper and better than the military in Afghanistan.

Mr. Feinberg, another official said, puts more emphasis than Mr. Prince on working with Afghanistans central government. But his strategy would also give the C.I.A. control over operations in Afghanistan, which would be carried out by paramilitary units and hence subject to less oversight than the military, according to a person briefed on it.

The strategy has been called the Laos option, after Americas shadowy involvement in Laos during the war in neighboring Vietnam. C.I.A. contractors trained Laotian soldiers to fight Communist insurgents and their North Vietnamese allies until 1975, leaving the country under Communist control and with a deadly legacy of unexploded bombs. In Afghanistan until now, contractors have been used mainly for security and logistics.

Whatever the flaws in these approaches and there are many, according to diplomats and military experts some former officials said it made sense to open up the debate.

The status quo is clearly not working, said Laurel Miller, who just stepped down as the State Departments special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the United States is going to chart a way forward towards a sustainable way of protecting our national security interests, it is important to consider a wide range of options.

Despite Mr. Bannons apparent inability to persuade Mr. Mattis, Defense Department officials said they did not underestimate his influence as a link to, and an advocate for, Mr. Trumps populist political base. Mr. Bannon has told colleagues that sending more troops to Afghanistan is a slippery slope to the nation building that Mr. Trump ran against during the campaign.

Mr. Bannon has also questioned what the United States has gotten for the $850 billion in nonmilitary spending it has poured into the country, noting that Afghanistan confounded the neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration and the progressives in the Obama administration.

Mr. Kushner has not staked out as strong a position, one official said. But he, too, is sharply critical of the Bush and Obama strategies, and has said he views his role as making sure the president has credible options. Mr. Mattis has promised to present Mr. Trump with a recommendation for a broader strategy this month.

Like General McMaster, Mr. Mattis is believed to support sending several thousand more American troops to bolster the effort to advise and assist Afghan forces as they seek to reverse gains made by the Taliban. But he has been extremely careful in his public statements not to tip his hand, and has not yet exercised his authority to deploy troops.

Aides and associates say that while Mr. Mattis believes that Mr. Princes concept of relying on private armies in Afghanistan goes too far, he supported using contractors for limited, specific tasks when he was the four-star commander of the Pentagons Central Command.

No one should diminish the role that they play, Mr. Mattis, then a general, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2012. It is expensive, but there are places and times where having a contract force works well for us, as opposed to putting uniformed military to do, whether its a training mission or a security guard mission.

The Pentagon has developed options to send 3,000 to 5,000 more American troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces, with a consensus settling on about 4,000 additional troops. NATO countries would contribute a few thousand additional forces.

It seems likely that the new strategy in Afghanistan will look a lot like what was proposed at the end of 2013, said James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as NATOs top military commander.

Some critics say the increase will have little effect on the fighting on the ground. In May, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, testified that the situation in Afghanistan would probably deteriorate through 2018 despite a modest increase in American and NATO forces.

Asked in June by reporters in Brussels about that analysis, Mr. Mattis responded curtly, Theyre entitled to their assessment.

James Risen contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on July 11, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Businessmen Get a Say on Afghan War Strategy.

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Trump Aides Recruited Businessmen to Devise Options for ...

As the United States searches for a strategy in Afghanistan, a near consensus exists that military power alone cannot defeat the Taliban, making a political resolution of the conflict both necessary and inevitable. It is important to deploy more troops to the country, not because that action will force the Taliban to eventually reconcile in a power-sharing arrangement, but because it buys time for the reintegration process to yield threads of success. Theoretically, reintegration will allow for Afghanistan to gradually wean off the Talibans mid-level commanders in the leadership council from the Talibans hardcore ideologues, which would then make it possible for the country avoid negotiating a political settlement with the terror group.

The Taliban senior leadership remains dedicated to realizing an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. Although that ideology has evolved over time, it would be unwise to expect the Taliban to compete in democratic elections, take cabinet positions, and respect the rights of minorities and free media. Therefore, a negotiated agreement that incorporates more Islamic values within the countrys constitutional democratic frameworkwhich also somehow preserves most of Afghanistans social and economic gains since 2001is unlikely. The Taliban dont just seek to gain control over the political system, they want change it. Had the group simply wanted a share of power, then its leaders would have come to the table long ago. The movements ascendant ideologues reject popular legitimacy and democratic accountability, viewing them as placing the will of the people above that of God. Even the Talibans so-called pragmatiststhose possibly prepared to entertain a political outcomeseem unwilling to compromise on core principles.

Earlier this year, the Afghan government signed a peace deal with the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, welcoming him to Kabul after more than twenty years. This accord was promoted as offering precedence for making peace with the Taliban, but it does not. Hekmatyars relations with the Taliban during his armed opposition to the Kabul government were mostly frayed. Though a hard-line Islamist, Hekmatyar has never sought to establish an Islamic emirate. Whether against his fellow mujahideen in the early 1990s, the Taliban in the mid-1990s, or the U.S.-supported Karzai administration after 2001, Hekmatyar has always fought for power for himself and his party rather than for institutional or ideological transformation. The deal he signed with the Ghani regime was far too generous for someone who could neither claim political legitimacy nor mount a serious threat to the Afghan state. It is the agreement that has elevated his significance and given him an opportunity to resume the role of a disruptive figure in Afghan politics. Indeed, Hekmatyar poses a far greater challenge to the stability of the Afghan government from the inside than he ever did from the outside.

Attempts to reconcile with the Taliban through a grand bargain are probably as unwise as they are unrealistic, and certainly more so as the movements control overor contesting ofAfghanistans countryside continues to expand. While such expectations of the strategy to increase troops should be ruled out, it should be noted that Afghanistan could still use a nonmilitary route to achieve a peaceful, stable and united country. Reintegration is one option that could the move the country toward those goals. It would require gradually weaning off Taliban field commanders and their foot soldiers from the Taliban movement. It would necessitate regional deals capable of leading those men toward laying down their arms and melding them back into the countrys political and social life. Seeing the prospect of being materially better off and able to satisfy local grievances would help to overcome Taliban loyalties. Senior Taliban leadership would then find themselves marginalized and unable to pose a serious military threat to the Kabul regime.

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With More Troops in Afghanistan, Focus on Reintegration, Not Reconciliation - The National Interest Online