Please read the attached article from The New York Times about the present situation in Afghanistan and pray accordingly. There is a lot of fighting going on in many parts of the country. Last year more than 3000 Afghan Police men and soldiers died, these are more casualties than the entire NATO troops suffered since they came to Afghanistan about 13 years ago.

In addition to that, the government has not been able to choose the new defense minister, since the government came to power last September, and this during a time of war. President Ghani's nominations were repeatedly rejected by the parliament.

Please pray for agreement to be quickly reached on the choice of a good defense minister and for the Afghan government and army to wisely, unitedly and effectively deal with the growing Taliban threat to the capital of Kabul and the nation. 

Afghan Forces Battle Taliban as Lawmakers Reject Defense Minister

The New York Times
By MUJIB MASHALJ
JULY 4, 2015
KABUL, Afghanistan 

Afghan security forces battling the Taliban about 30 miles west of Kabul have sustained heavy casualties, officials said Saturday, as senior members of the government criticized the response to the assault as slow and ineffective. 

Details of the fighting in Wardak Province, which began Thursday, were murky, but statements by various officials said that 16 to 30 members of the Afghan Local Police, a militia controlled by the Interior Ministry, were killed, along with at least two civilians. Some of the dead were decapitated, officials said. 

Mr. Ghani, in a statement, said "the desecration" of the bodies was a "war crime." 

The ugly turn in the war comes as Afghanistan's struggling coalition government remains without a minister of defense 10 months after taking office. President Ashraf Ghani's third nomination for the post was rejected by Parliament on Saturday. 

The fighting was taking place in the province's Jalrez district, which lies on a strategically important highway connecting Kabul, the capital, to the central province of Bamian. The highway was closed Saturday, said Masood Shneezai, deputy chief of Wardak's provincial council. 

A spokesman for Wardak's governor said 30 members of the Taliban had been killed and 18 wounded. 

Mr. Shneezai said the Taliban had overrun about 11 security checkpoints since the battle began. He accused the province's police chief, Gen. Khalil Andarabi, of negligence and expressed concern that the insurgents could threaten Kabul if Jalrez fell. "There is only one mountain separating Jalrez from Paghman," Mr. Shneezai said, referring to a district on the outskirts of the capital. 

Security officials said hundreds of supporting forces, who reached the area on Friday and Saturday, had taken back at least seven of the checkpoints and secured the government buildings in central Jalrez. 

"The Afghan Local Police members fought the insurgents until their last breath, and when the ammunition finished they were killed by the Taliban," said one local security official on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. More than 400 Taliban fighters were involved in the onslaught, the official said. Two police vehicles were blown up and two others were taken by the insurgents. 

Some senior officials in Kabul, including Vice President Sarwar Danish, criticized the security forces' response to the assault, underscoring the dysfunctional nature of Afghanistan's power-sharing government as it struggles to push back an intense Taliban offensive across the country. 

Mr. Danish, who called the Taliban assault a "brutal and unacceptable tragedy," accused officials in Wardak of "negligence and delay" and criticized what he said was a "lack of responsibility and coordination." 

Hajji Mohammad Mohaqeq, the deputy chief executive of the coalition government, said that 22 security personnel had been killed and "their bodies chopped up to pieces and burned after their martyrdom" while units of an Afghan police force headquartered nearby provided no support...