Mediaboss Marketing

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) was dropped Thursday night on a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces.

The strike, in Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border, also killed 36 ISIS fighters, Afghan officials say.

The US military was quizzed Friday on whether the munition, known as the "mother of all bombs" for its extraordinary force, was necessary for the particular target.

The GPS-guided bomb is capable of destroying an area equivalent to nine city blocks.

"This was the right weapon against the right target," the commander for US forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, told a press conference.

"It was the right time to use it tactically against the right target on the battlefield."

The blast destroyed three underground tunnels as well as weapons and ammunition, but no civilians were hurt, Afghan and US officials have said.

The US military previously estimated ISIS had 600 to 800 active fighters in the area, but was unclear whether they had hoped to strike more fighters.

Nicholson gave a vague response to a question by reporters on who exactly ordered or greenlighted the strike, saying only that he enjoyed a certain amount of "latitude" to make decisions in his chain of command.

Nicholson also confirmed the strike was carried out in coordination with Afghan officials, and said that the mission had conducted rigorous surveillance before, during and after the operation to prevent civilian deaths.

"Let me be clear -- we will not relent in our mission to fight alongside our Afghan comrades to destroy ISIS-K in 2017," he said, referring to ISIS' regional branch.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he approved of the strike and that it was designed to support Afghan forces and US forces conducting clearance operations in the region.

The US bomb was dropped as Washington comes under increased scrutiny over its military actions in the Middle East, including three US-led airstrikes in the past month that are reported to have killed civilians or allies.

But US President Donald Trump said Thursday that the Afghanistan bombing was "another successful job."

Residents in villages kilometers away from the target area felt Thursday's powerful strike as if bombs had fallen nearby.

A local resident living around two kilometers (1.5 miles) from the blast told CNN he heard an "extremely loud boom that smashed the windows of our house."

"We were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house," he said.

"I have witnessed a countless number of explosions and bombings in the last 30 years of war in Afghanistan, but this one was more powerful than any other bomb as far as I remember."

Another Afghan man, 46-year-old Abdul, who lives three kilometers from the site, described the thick cloud of dust that formed after the deafening blast.

"We were unable to see each other at home because of the excessive dust inside the room," he said.

"I was feeling that boom 'til the morning."

Locals told CNN that more than 3,000 families had fled the district in the past year or so since the militant group established its presence.

Those troops are separate to a wider NATO-led effort to train, advise and assist the Afghan army and police force.

The Taliban "control or contest" about a third of the population of the country, Bergen said, citing senior US military officials. That's around 10 million people -- more than the population ISIS controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power during the summer of 2014, he added.

This is the first time a MOAB has been used in the battlefield, according to the US officials. The munition was developed during the Iraq war and is an air blast-type warhead that explodes before hitting the ground in order to project a massive blast to all sides.

Military officials said they hoped the MOAB would create such a huge blast that it would rattle Iraqi troops and pressure them into surrendering or not even fighting.

As originally conceived, the MOAB was to be used against large formations of troops and equipment or hardened above-ground bunkers. The target set has also been expanded to include targets buried under softer surfaces, like caves or tunnels.

CNN's Angela Dewan, Ehsan Popalazia, Ryan Browne, Zachary Cohen, Jim Acosta, Jeremy Diamond, Ehsan Popalzai and Euan McKirdy contributed to this report.

Link:
US military defends dropping 'mother of all bombs' on ISIS in Afghanistan - CNN

New York Times

US Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan New York Times The United States dropped the most powerful nonnuclear bomb in its arsenal on what it said was an ISIS cave complex in remote Afghanistan. The bomb called the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast can obliterate everything within a 1,000-yard ... and more »

Go here to read the rest:
US Drops 'Mother of All Bombs' on ISIS Caves in Afghanistan - New York Times

New York Times

Afghanistan, Syria, Vin Diesel: Your Friday Briefing - The New York ... New York Times Afghan security forces during an operation against the Islamic State in the Achin district on Friday, a day after the U.S. dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast in ... and more »

More:
Afghanistan, Syria, Vin Diesel: Your Friday Briefing - The New York ... - New York Times

STATE DEPARTMENT / ISLAMABAD

As the United States and Russia clash on Syria, another war-torn nation could play out as a renewed theater for the U.S.-Russia rivalry: Afghanistan.

Thursday, U.S. forces dropped what was being called the largest non-nuclear bomb on a reported Islamic State militant complex in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.

The U.S. strike came a day before Russia is to host multi-nation talks on prospects for Afghan security and national reconciliation, the third such round since December.

Eleven countries are set to take part in Friday's discussions in Moscow, including Afghanistan, China, Iran, Pakistan and India. Former Soviet Central Asian states have been invited to attend for the first time.

The Afghan Taliban said Thursday that they would not take part.

"We cannot call these negotiations [in Moscow] as a dialogue for the restoration of peace in Afghanistan," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA. "This meeting stems from political agendas of the countries who are organizing it. This has really nothing to do with us, nor do we support it."

The spokesman reiterated insurgents' traditional stance that U.S.-led foreign troops would have to leave Afghanistan before any conflict resolution talks could be initiated.

The United States was also invited to the Moscow talks, but Washington declined, saying it had not been informed of the agenda beforehand and was unclear about the meeting's motives.

FILE - Afghan security forces and NATO troops investigate at the site of an explosion near the German consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, Nov. 11, 2016.

Undermining NATO

American military officials suspect Russia's so-called Afghan peace diplomacy is aimed at undermining NATO and have accused Moscow of arming the Taliban.

"I think it is fair to assume they may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban], in terms of weapons or other things that may be there," U.S. Central Command Chief General Joseph Votel told members of the House Armed Services Committee in March. He said he thought Russia was "attempting to be an influential party in this part of the world."

For its part, Moscow has denied that it is supporting the Afghan Taliban.

"These fabrications are designed, as we have repeatedly underlined, to justify the failure of the U.S. military and politicians in the Afghan campaign.There is no other explanation," said Zamir Kabulov, the Kremlin's special envoy to Afghanistan.

In a separate statement Thursday, the Taliban also denied receiving military aid from Russia, though the group defended "political understanding" with Afghanistan's neighbors and regional countries.

Anna Borshchevskaya of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said reports of Moscow supporting the Taliban were not new.

"The official Russian position on the Taliban is that they see it as a group that could help fight ISIS, but this is something that even some Taliban spokesmen have denied, since ISIS and the Taliban reached an understanding about a year ago," Borshchevskaya said.

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures during his annual news conference in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 23, 2016.

Putin's motive

She said that if the allegations of Russian support for the Taliban were true, Russian President Vladimir Putin was most likely motivated by his desire to undermine the West.

"Certainly one motivation could be taking advantage of regional chaos, and to assert Russia's influence at the expense of the U.S., taking advantage of a U.S. retreat from the Middle East and elsewhere and [to] undermine NATO and the U.S." Borshchevskaya said, "This has been Putin's pattern."

U.S. President Donald Trump has made few public statements on Afghanistan, and his administration is still weighing whether to deploy more American troops to try to reverse the course of the war.

Thursday's strike in Nangarhar marked a major step by the Trump administration in Afghanistan, in which there has been a U.S. military presence since 2001.

During a March 31 NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reaffirmed U.S. support for the alliance's mission in Afghanistan.

"NATO's work in Afghanistan remains critical. The United States is committed to the Resolute Support Mission and to our support for Afghan forces," Tillerson said.

Some 13,000 NATO troops, including 8,400 Americans, are part of the support mission, tasked with training Afghanistan's 300,000-member national security and defense forces.

Michael Kugelman, South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, said he expected continuity in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan between the Obama and Trump administrations.

"The statement made by Tillerson at a recent NATO meeting could well have been uttered by an Obama official," Kugelman said. "The focus on training, advising and assisting and the call for reconciliation mirror exactly the Obama administration's priorities."

FILE - U.S. Army General John Nicholson Campbell, commander of Resolute Support forces and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, takes the reins in a change-of-command ceremony in Kabul, March 2, 2016.

More troops

But the South Asia analyst noted one important policy difference: U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.

"Obama was an anti-war president who was never comfortable keeping large numbers of troops in Afghanistan. Trump is unlikely to be as constrained," Kugelman said.

"Look for Trump to send in several thousand more troops," he said. "This is a request that the generals in Afghanistan have made for years, and Trump is more likely to defer to the U.S. military's wishes on this than Obama was."

As for Russian involvement in Afghanistan following the former Soviet Union's occupation of the South Asian country from 1979 to 1989, Kugelman said that even if Russia were engaging the Taliban to undercut U.S. influence, the two nations ultimately hope for the same outcome in Afghanistan.

"The ironic thing is that Washington and Moscow both want the same endgame in Afghanistan an end to the war, preferably through a reconciliation process but they simply can't get on the same page about how to proceed," Kugelman said.

Visit link:
US Wary of Russian Role in Afghanistan as Moscow Holds Talks - Voice of America

WRBL

Political analysis of U.S. attack on Afghanistan WRBL The former Columbus Mayor says he stands behind the Trump Administration's decision to bomb ISIS in Afghanistan. He explains what Thursday's attack could mean for the future of the United States. Thursday afternoon, most in America became alert after ...

More:
Political analysis of U.S. attack on Afghanistan - WRBL