Meanwhile, another suicide terror attack claimed eight lives and injured 15 in the provincial capital of Jalalabad on Thursday, local hospital officials said.
The US-trained Afghan National Police has so far failed to uphold law and order in the nation despite the Pentagon's 16-year presence there. The ANP functions more as a paramilitary than a police force, partly because the US military doesn't have a background in training police officers, but rather in shaping fighting forces.
"The military trained the ANP to do what it knows how to do — which is not how to do crime and street policing, but how to do military exercises," Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Observer November 21.
In late September, John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, remarked that one US officer resorted to watching "TV shows like ‘Cops' and ‘NCIS' to learn what he should teach."
"The US government is not well organized to conduct large scale security-sector assistance missions in post-conflict nations or in the developing world," Sopko said.
"For another bizarre example, at one point, training sessions for Afghan police were using PowerPoint-based curricula from the US-NATO Balkan operations," the special inspector said, adding that "the eight presentations were not only of questionable relevance to the Afghan setting, but also overlooked the high levels of illiteracy among the police. Such cut-and-paste activities, lifted from one country and slapped onto another like a decal, are not likely to boost the prospects for overall success."
Daesh started pouring into Afghanistan earlier this year, a development that has further strained the already precarious security situation there, as the Taliban, the US' longtime enemy in the region, once more expands its presence across larger swaths of territory. The two groups have repeatedly fought each other within the country, Reuters notes.
In June, Sputnik reported that Daesh had taken over the Tora Bora cave complex in Nangarhar province where Osama bin Laden once hid. Afghan MP Hazrat Ali said he told US forces "to target them, and I told them they are trying to capture Tora Bora, but they did not pay attention."
Afghanistan Acting Defense Minister Tariqshah Bahrami later said Afghan security forces drove out Daesh insurgents. According to Afghan intelligence documents shown to Reuters, however, officials still think Daesh has militants in nine provinces across Afghanistan, including in Nangarhar's Tora Bora caves.
