Ashraf Ghani

Europe's migrant crisis and devastating terror attacks will combine with the plunging oil price and China's economic slowdown to give the elite of the political and business worlds plenty to talk about when they gather in Davos from Jan. 18.

Turkey will recall its troops from Afghanistan whenever Kabul gives its "okay," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an said Dec. 24.

Addressing a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani in Ankara, Erdo?an said, "Afghanistan has been hurt seriously and we will continue to help them heal these wounds.

Turkmenistan on Dec. 13 started work on its part of a natural gas pipeline to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI), a $10 billion project designed to reduce its dependence on gas sales to Russia and China.

The last of 11 Taliban insurgents who infiltrated Kandahar airport was killed late on Dec. 9, more than 24 hours after the attack was launched, the country's Defense Ministry said, with the death toll among civilians and security forces rising to 50. 

Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres denied that Taliban fighters were firing from its hospital at Afghan and NATO forces  before a suspected U.S. air strike killed at least 19 people in a battle to oust the Islamist insurgents from an Afghan city. 

A U.S. airstrike in Kunduz, in Afganistan  killed at least 19 people at a hospital run by international medical-aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) early Saturday.

MSF said 12 Afghan staff members and at least seven patients, among them three children, were killed and 37 people more, including patients and medical staff, were wounded.

Afghan forces clashed with Taliban fighters in Kunduz on Sept. 29 as the government launched an operation to retake the centre of the northern city, the first provincial capital to fall to the insurgents since their movement was toppled 14 years ago.

A high-level Afghan delegation arrived in Pakistan on August 13 to discuss an action plan after Islamabad-hosted peace talks with the Taliban were suspended last month, officials said.

The first officially acknowledged peace talks between the Afghan Taliban and the government in Kabul concluded with an agreement to meet again after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Pakistan said on July 8.

Thirty one people were abducted from a bus hijacking last February, in Afghanistan. 19 of those were released by their captors.

These people belong to a Persian minority in Afghanistan and were abducted by the Taliban over religious differences.