Ceremonies mark the end of Australia #39;s campaign in Afghanistan
Welcome Home: Parades and ceremonies across the country mark the official end of Australia #39;s longest campaign and commemorate the 41 Diggers who died in Afghanistan Prime Minister...
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Ceremonies mark the end of Australia's campaign in Afghanistan - Video
FIRING M203 GRENADE LAUNCHER IN AFGHANISTAN HD
Daily Military News Combat Footage at FUNKER530.com - http://vid.io/xGB Firing from a Canadian Combat outpost.
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FIRING M203 GRENADE LAUNCHER IN AFGHANISTAN HD - Video
KABUL Afghan President Ashraf Ghani faces a delicate task Sunday when he arrives in Washington on his first official visit since taking office. Convincing U.S. lawmakers that Afghanistan is on the right track but still requires monetary aid and military support will not be easy.
The Obama administration will also try to put a positive face on Afghanistans new power-sharing government, which it brokered and has nurtured since its inauguration in September. That, too, wont be easy.
Six months into Ghanis tenure, Afghanistan still does not have a full cabinet of ministers or new governorships, their selection mired by political frictions. Peace talks with the Taliban Islamist insurgency, which Afghan officials predicted would begin early this month, are still in an embryonic stage, unclear if they will ever take place.
Security across the country remains precarious, as civilian, army and police casualties reached unprecedented levels last year. Afghanistans U.S.- trained security forces are struggling to fill the void left by the departure of most U.S. and international troops in December.
[Ghani and Abdullah: The importance of the U.S.-Afghanistan alliance]
Internal disputes between Ghanis camp and that of his chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, who shares power with Ghani, continue to penetrate many areas of the political system, according to Afghan officials and analysts. Abdullah is accompanying Ghani to Washington, creating a potential diplomatic challenge for the Obama administration as it engages this week in talks with both Afghan leaders over Afghanistans future, including a session at Camp David hosted by Secretary of State John F. Kerry.
Afghans still lack a united government, said Musa Fariwar, a Kabul based political analyst. The peace talks have made no progress. It means both leaders are going to the United States with empty hands.
On Saturday, hours before he was scheduled to leave for Washington, Ghani told international reporters at the presidential palace that cabinet ministers have been nominated, including four women.
But their appointments still require approval from Afghanistans fractious parliament. In January, the body rejected more than half of Ghanis and Abdullahs original nominees, including the key defense minister post. A new electoral reform commission was also appointed Saturday, said Ghani, who once lived in Bethesda, Md.
The visit marks the first time President Obama will meet Ghani and Abdullah since the government was created, following a disputed presidential election that threatened to plunge the nation into chaos. At Camp David and in Washington, the leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues, focusing largely on security, economic development, and U.S. support for the Afghan-led reconciliation process, according to State Department officials.
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Afghanistan president faces a delicate task on first official Washington visit
Ethnic Hazara demonstrators gather in a protest tent in Afghanistan's capital demanding action to rescue Hazaras kidnapped from a bus by masked men who many believe are influenced by Islamic State, in Kabul, March 19, 2015. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani
By Hamid Shalizi and Krista Mahr
KABUL (Reuters) - Even by Afghanistan's standards of often-shifting alliances, a recent meeting between ethnic Hazara elders and local commanders of the Taliban insurgents who have persecuted them for years was extraordinary.
The Hazaras a largely Shi'ite minority killed in the thousands during the Taliban's hard-line Sunni Islamist rule of the 1990s came to their old enemies seeking protection against what they deemed an even greater threat: masked men operating in the area calling themselves "Daish", a term for Islamic State in the region.
In a sign of changing times, the Taliban commanders agreed to help, said Abdul Khaliq Yaqubi, one of the elders at the meeting held in the eastern province of Ghazni.
The unusual pact is a window into deepening anxiety in Afghanistan over reports of Islamic State (IS) radicals gaining a foothold in a country already weary of more than a decade of war with the Taliban.
Back-to-back kidnappings within a month of two groups of Hazara travellers by men widely rumoured, though far from proven, to claim fealty to IS -have many spooked.
The current threat IS poses in Afghanistan, observers say, is less about real military might than the opportunity for disparate insurgent groups, including defectors from an increasingly fractured Taliban, to band together under this global "brand" that controls swathes of Iraq and Syria.
The fear is especially keen among religious minorities like the Hazaras, who worry the influence of the fiercely anti-Shi'ite IS could introduce a new dimension of sectarian strife to the war.
"Whether Daish exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Reuters.
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Fearing Islamic State, Afghanistan's Shi'ites seek help from old enemies