KABUL: The Taliban launched their annual spring offensive on Wednesday, in an apparent rejection of calls for the militants to take up the Afghan government’s offer of peace talks.
Operation Al-Khandaq — named after a famous seventh century battle in Medina in which Muslim fighters defeated “infidel” invaders — will target US forces and “their intelligence agents” as well as their “internal supporters,” a Taliban statement said.
The Taliban said the offensive was partly a response to US President Donald Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan announced last August, which gave US forces more leeway to go after insurgents.
The annual spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though this winter the Taliban continued to battle Afghan and US forces.
The group also launched a series of devastating attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.
Al-Khandaq will mainly focus on “crushing, killing and capturing American invaders and their supporters,” the Taliban said.
It added the presence of American bases “sabotages all chances of peace” and were key to “prolonging the ongoing war,” which began with the US-led intervention in 2001 that overthrew the Taliban regime.
Afghanistan’s largest militant group has been under pressure to accept Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s February offer of peace talks, but the statement made no mention of the proposal.
Western and Afghan experts said the Taliban announcement was an apparent rejection of the offer and heralded more intense fighting in the drawn-out war.
“We’re in for a hot and busy summer,” a foreign diplomat in Kabul said.
Afghan political analyst Ahmad Saeedi said the Taliban appeared to consider America’s rejection of the group’s own request for direct peace talks with the US in February as leaving them with “no other choice but to fight.”
“This year they will try to weaken the (Afghan) government even further. They will try to derail the election process,” the Kabul University professor said.
“A weak government would eventually mean forcing the US to talk to them.”
Defense ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanish dismissed the Taliban announcement as “propaganda.”
The US-backed Afghan government is under pressure on multiple fronts this year as it prepares to hold long-delayed legislative elections even as its security forces struggle to get the upper hand on the battlefield and prevent civilian casualties.
On Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd outside a voter registration center in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding 129, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.
The Daesh group claimed responsibility for the bomb, but Western and Afghan officials suspect Daesh receives assistance from other groups, including the Taliban’s Haqqani Network, to carry out attacks.
Afghanistan’s Taliban announce annual spring offensive
Afghanistan’s Taliban announce annual spring offensive
Climate activist group files second lawsuit against Sweden
- Sweden’s Supreme Court in February 2025 ruled that the complaint filed against the state was inadmissible
- “We still have a chance to get out of the planetary crises and build a safe and fair world,” Edling said
STOCKHOLM: A group of climate activists said Friday they were filing another lawsuit against the Swedish state for alleged climate inaction, after the Supreme Court threw out their case last year.
The group behind the lawsuit, Aurora, first tried to sue the Swedish state in late 2022.
Sweden’s Supreme Court in February 2025 ruled that the complaint filed against the state — brought by an individual, with 300 other people joining it as a class action lawsuit — was inadmissible.
The court at the time noted the “very high requirements for individuals to have the right to bring such a claim” against a state.
“We still have a chance to get out of the planetary crises and build a safe and fair world. But this requires that rich countries that emit as much as Sweden stop breaking the law,” Aurora spokesperson Ida Edling said in a statement Friday.
The group, which said the lawsuit had been filed with the Stockholm District Court Friday, said it believes the Swedish state is obligated “to reduce Sweden’s emissions as much and as quickly as necessary in order for the country to be in line with its fair share.”
“This means that emissions from several sectors must reach zero before 2030,” the group said, while noting this was 15 years before Sweden’s currently set targets.
The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency as well as the OECD warned last year that Sweden was at risk of not reaching its own goal of net zero emissions by 2045.
While the first lawsuit was unsuccessful, the group noted that international courts had made several landmark decisions since the first suit was filed, spotlighting two in particular.
In an April 2024 decision, Europe’s top rights court, the European Court of Human Rights, ruled that Switzerland was not doing enough to tackle climate change, the first country ever to be condemned by an international tribunal for not taking sufficient action to curb global warming.
In 2025, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that countries violating their climate obligations were committing an “unlawful” act.
