US general: Russia may be supplying Taliban fighters

US general: Russia may be supplying Taliban fighters



 The top US general in Europe said on Thursday he has seen growing Russian influence on the Afghan Taliban, and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the fighters.

Russia has been critical of the US over its handling of the war in Afghanistan - now in its 16th year - where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s.
But Russian officials have denied they provide aid to the Taliban, which is contesting large swaths of territory and inflicting heavy casualties, and say their limited contacts are aimed at bringing the group to the negotiating table.
"I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Darren Rainey's death in prison shower 'accidental'

Darren Rainey's death in prison shower 'accidental' Anger as state attorney rules 2012 death of Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic 'punished' with scalding shower, an accident. Civil rights organisations have condemned a US state attorney's decision to close the case against prison guards who sent an inmate to a scalding shower, which witnesses and lawyers believe killed him. In June 2012, four guards trapped 50-year-old Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic, in  a shower at Florida's Dade Correctional Institute for two hours He was found dead lying face up in the shower, his skin red and slipping off. Some prisoners said they heard Rainey scream out for help, saying the water was "too hot",  that they saw steam coming out of the shower, and  that CPR was not performed. While a prison nurse said that Rainey's body felt hot, she said a sergeant did perform CPR. On Friday, the office of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle...
Read more

US-backed Syria forces resume fighting near Tabqa dam

US-backed Syria forces resume fighting near Tabqa dam SDF says Taqba Dam is not damaged and fighting will resume, but monitor casts doubt on whether engineers inspected site. US-backed forces in Syria are resuming an offensive against ISIL fighters at a major hydroelectric dam, saying it is in no danger of collapsing amid conflicting claims over its integrity.  The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces' (SDF) offensive was  briefly suspended  on Monday, a day after a senior Syrian government official warned that the Tabqa Dam had been damaged by US-led air raids and cited an increasing risk of catastrophic flooding. ISIL  had also issued warnings that the dam could collapse "at any moment",   releasing pictures showing what it said was the structure's control room after it had been damaged by US air raids. The SDF, an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters, paused operations for four hours on Monday to allow engineers to inspect the dam, a...
Read more

North Korea 'fails' in new missile test: South South Korean and US officials say they have detected a failed missile launch attempt by North Korea.

North Korea 'fails' in new missile test: South South Korean and US officials say they have detected a failed missile launch attempt by North Korea. A new  North Korean missile test appeared to have ended in failure, according to South Korean and US officials. The reported failed launch on Wednesday came  during large-scale annual military drills involving US and South Korean forces  that the North has called a rehearsal for an invasion. Seoul's defence ministry said in a statement that  Pyongyang fired one missile from an air base in the eastern port of Wonsan but the launch  The statement came after Japan's Kyodo news service, citing an unidentified government source, said the North might have launched several missiles and that they were a failure. A US military spokesman also said they had detected a failed North Korean missile launch attempt, with a missile exploding within seconds of its launch. "US Pacific Command detected what we...
Read more