Foreign fighters set up shop in northern Afghanistan

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Kunduz, Afghanistan - Tribal elders aren't sure who the estimated 50 foreign fighters with their families are - or how they got here.

Just six months ago, the Afghan military conducted operations in Chardara district in northern Kunduz province to push the Taliban beyond city limits.

Now, foreign fighter enclaves dot this province's rapidly changing political landscape.

According to residents and local officials, foreign fighters and their families have taken up residence in three of the province's seven districts.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/04/foreign-fighters-set-shop-northern-afghanistan-150424081505305.html

[Jesus Malverde]

1. by way of deception...

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2. The old ways are best ... nt

[Jesus Malverde]

3. .

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4. Afghan official: Insurgents flood in from Pakistan to north

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan official says insurgents are arriving in huge numbers from neighboring Pakistan in an effort to destabilize Afghanistan's northern provinces.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said Wednesday that Afghan troops are engaged in fierce fighting outside the provincial capital of Kunduz, where the Taliban launched an attack last week as part of their annual spring offensive.

Sediqqi says the Taliban are being joined by "terrorists" arriving from Pakistan, who include foreign fighters from neighboring countries.

He says around 200 militants have been killed so far, along with 12 Afghan soldiers in fighting in Kunduz province.

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/world/asia/afghan-official-insurgents-flood-in-from-pakistan-to-north/article_7995c68d-2af4-51dd-854b-5f2ec7e53ebf.html

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5. Vacuum: ISIS is rapidly expanding into Afghanistan

Sparse reports in January that agents linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria had begun to actively recruit inside Afghanistan were, while troubling, dismissed by many international observers.

“People who want to fight in Afghanistan just create new names – one day they are wearing white clothes (of the Taliban) and the next day they have black clothes and call themselves Daesh, but they are the same people,” one Afghan analyst told CBS News earlier this year.

ISIS was reportedly behind a series of gruesome beheadings in Afghanistan in the autumn of last year. Militants linked to the Sunni insurgency coupled this insult to human dignity with series of attacks on villages in Ghazni Province. Still, few believed that ISIS represented anything resembling the threat to regional stability posed by the Taliban.

That assessment is changing.

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/05/01/vacuum-isis-is-rapidly-expanding-into-afghanistan/