U.S. Aggressively Continues to Pursue ISK, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan: Spokesman

The U.S. forces in Afghanistan continue its offensive against Islamic State – Khorasan (ISK) province and Al Qaeda, officials said.

According to a Resolute Support Spokesman in Afghanistan, the number of ISK militants in the country have decreased from 3,000 to 1,000 and they have lost one third of territory which was under their control.

“We do have the authority to conduct unilateral operations with defeating Al Qaeda as well as ISK. We very aggressively pursue that mission. Last year, we conducted 350 operations against those terrorists, and specifically, we captured or killed over 200 Al Qaeda members. And we think we degraded the ISK industry by 500 and reduce their overall presence in the country,” Brig. General Charlie Cleveland, the NATO spokesman in Afghanistan said.

NATO officials say the Daesh still controlling around a thousand militants across the country.

The alliance believes there were up to 3,000 members of ISK located in eastern Jalalabad province of Afghanistan and they had a presence in about 10 to 11 districts. Now after a year since the U.S. received the authority to go ahead and target Daesh, the number have decreased to 1,000 with having a presence in only two or three districts.

“There are approximately 1,000 members of ISK in a province in the south. We think they are only in about two to three districts,” Gen. Cleveland added.

Officials reports that there are 98 U.S. designated terrorists organizations in the world and 20 of them are operating in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region.

“The international community does recognize that the Afghans have made progress, but they still have a ways to go, and therefore, we need to remain engaged, and we do remain — and we do need to remain focused on the terrorist threats from the area,” Gen. Cleveland continued.

The main mission of the US forces in Afghanistan is to train, advise and assist Afghan security forces in order to be able to defend their own borders and address terrorist threats.

Currently there are about 9,800 Americans in Afghanistan. The Obama administration has scheduled to take down the number to 8,400 by the first of January 2017 despite of the country having a fragile political and military situation.

Reported by: Fahim Noori