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Registered voters are feeling less confident about Americas prospects in Afghanistan as the war there closes in on 16 years, recent Morning Consult/POLITICO polling shows.

Less than a quarter of Americans (23 percent) believe the United States is winning the war there, versus 38 percent who believe its losing, according to the pollof 1,992 voters.

The results echo similar comments from Defense Secretary James Mattis, who himself acknowledged the United States was not winning in Afghanistan right now. The Trump administration is weighing whether to approve a plan for more troops in the country, and Mattis pledged to develop a new strategy by mid-July.

Initial sources said Trump would give Mattis the authority to add thousands more troops to the roughly 8,400 forces there now. But since then, Mattiss plan has hit an impasse amid disagreements among Trump advisers, some of whom are pushing to scale back U.S. involvement.

Last week, Trump told a group of reporters at his club in New Jersey that he is very close to a decision on updated strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

Were getting close. Were getting very close, Trump said, according to pool reports. Its a very big decision for me. I took over a mess and were going to make it a lot less messy.

In the absence of clear administration policy, most voters also did not support higher troop levels. A plurality of 37 percent said the U.S. should decrease the number of troops in Afghanistan, and 24 percent said troop levels should stay the same. One out of 5 voters said troop levels should rise.

Amid the uncertainty, the security situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. The poll was conducted Aug. 3-6, just after the Pentagon confirmed two U.S soldiers had been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a NATO convoy on Aug. 2. At least 2,400 U.S. service members have lost their lives in and around Afghanistan since the war started in 2001, according to figures provided by icasualties.org, an independent website.

The lack of a clear U.S. direction is also adding to pressure on the Afghan security forces, which are counting on Americas military training and troops to regain lost ground. According to U.S. military data released in July, the Afghan government controls or influences only 60 percent of the countrys 407 districts, down from 65 percent the same time last year.

While most voters were against increasing U.S. troop levels, when asked whether the United States needs a new, more aggressive strategy in the country even if it involves more troops, respondents appeared to change their minds, with 40 percent saying they were in support of the option. On the other hand, 32 percent said the U.S. should withdraw all troops, even if it means decreased ability to combat insurgent forces. (Another 28 percent didnt know or had no opinion.)

Military commander in Afghanistan General Nicholson said he needs more troops, people respect that opinion; but people are also concerned that neither the Obama administration or the Trump administration have a clear strategy for Afghanistan, and they are not satisfied with that, Christopher Kolenda, a former senior advisor on Afghanistan to the Defense Department and now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy, said when asked about the discrepancy in polling in an interview last week

At the same time, there may be valid reasons for Trump to rethink the long-term strategy in Afghanistan after former President Barack Obamas back-and-forth on troop deployment. The Obama administration deployed another 30,000 troops to the country in2009 but then withdrew troops over subsequent years after failing to eliminate the insurgency,leaving remaining U.S. troops more vulnerable and making U.S. allies nervous.

Public opinion on taking a more active approach to Afghanistan is split along party lines, with 58 percent of Republicans supporting a more aggressive strategy, compared to 30 percent of Democrats, according to the poll.

The Obama administration, which is Democrat, favored of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, so you still see the legacy of that administration, Kolenda said about the poll. The Republicans were opposed to Obamas timelines and want to see a different approach to Afghanistan.

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Voters Pessimistic on Afghanistan as Trump Weighs Boosting Troops - Morning Consult

KABUL (Reuters) - Several senior members of Islamic State's central Asian affiliate were killed in a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.

The attack on Thursday killed Abdul Rahman, identified by the U.S. military as the Kunar provincial emir for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Khorasan, according to a statement from the command in Kabul.

"The death of Abdul Rahman deals yet another blow to the senior leadership of ISIS-K," said General John Nicholson, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Three other senior ISIS-K members were also among those killed in the strike in eastern Kunar province.

Nicholson has vowed to defeat Islamic State militants in Afghanistan this year.

The group's emir, Abu Sayed, was reported killed in a strike on his headquarters in Kunar in July, the third Islamic State emir in Afghanistan to be killed since July 2016.

In April, Nicholson deployed a 21,600-pound (9,797 kg) "Massive Ordnance Air Blast" bomb against Islamic State positions in neighboring Nangarhar province, one of the largest conventional weapons ever used by the United States in combat.

On Saturday, Afghan officials said as many as 16 civilians, including women and children, had been killed by a U.S. air strike in Nangarhar, but American officials said only militants were killed.

As part of an increased campaign against both Islamic State and the Taliban, the dominant Islamist militant group in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has dropped nearly 2,000 weapons in the country as of the end of July, compared to fewer than 1,400 in all of last year.

Despite some battlefield successes by Afghan and American special operations troops, Islamic State has continued deadly attacks around Afghanistan, fueling fears that the group is seeking to bring the group's Middle East conflict to Central Asia.

Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Kim Coghill

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Senior Islamic State commanders killed in Afghanistan air strike: US military - Reuters

KABUL The U.S. military denied reports on Friday that an air strike in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar had killed as many as 16 civilians, saying the operation had killed only militant fighters.

KABUL The Afghan Taliban and Islamic State attacked a village in the northern province of Sar-e Pul this week, killing between 50-60 people, a leading Afghan human rights group said on Friday.

BEDMINSTER, N.J. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was very close to making a decision on the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, which is undergoing a review and could see an increase in troop strength.

Five transgender members of the U.S. military including Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sued President Donald Trump on Wednesday, challenging his ban on transgender people serving in the armed forces.

KABUL Two Afghan women working for a security firm searching people entering Bagram air base near the Afghan capital Kabul were killed on Wednesday and two others wounded by unknown gunmen, officials said.

SAR-E PUL, Afghanistan The Taliban released 235 villagers held after the insurgents captured a village in the northern Afghan province of Sar-e Pul, but the government faced growing pressure over why it had taken so long for security forces to arrive in the area.

ISLAMABAD A suicide bomber killed four Pakistani soldiers in an attack in the troubled northwest near the border with Afghanistan, the army said on Wednesday, at least the second major attack since Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi came to power a week ago.

SAR-E PUL, Afghanistan Afghan village elders are trying to arrange the release of around 150 families held by Taliban fighters in a remote area of the northern province of Sar-e Pul while they await for security forces to arrive, officials said on Tuesday.

KABUL The Taliban rejected reports they used foreign fighters and cooperated with Islamic State in fighting at a remote village in northern Afghanistan this weekend where officials said dozens of local police and civilians were killed.

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Afghanistan | Reuters

Afghan entrepreneur, Roya Mahboob, announced her intention to organize a conference for bitcoin in Afghanistan to showcase projects developed by female Afghan entrepreneurs. The CEO and co-founder of Digital Citizen Fund has worked tirelessly for womens financial empowerment in Afghanistan, being deemed one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2013.

Also Read:Code To Inspire: Connecting Afghan Women To The Global Economy

Roya Mahboob is the CEO and co-founder of Digital Citizen Fund, a nonprofit that has enrolled 9,000 Afghan women and girls in education programs and that plans to organize a conference for bitcoin in Afghanistan. Speaking recently with International Business Times, Mahboob states that theDigital Citizen Fund has helped 100 women start their own businesses. The next step is we are going to have a bitcoin conference in Afghanistan so we can showcase their projects.

Mahboob foresees blockchain technology having profound applications in Afghanistan outside of comprising a vehicle for financial autonomy. Blockchain-based smart contracts provide an excellent solution to problems of contracts being denied or destroyed, an underhanded business practice that Mahboob claims is regularly used against women due to the unlikelihood the victim receiving assistance from authorities. No one can destroy the records and say we dont have a contract. That is all important for women with financial independence in developing countries, Mahboob said. Mahboob also hopes to develop a blockchain-powered marketplace for women, using smart contracts for insurance and loans, International Business Times reports.

At the age of 23, Mahboob founded Afghan Citadel Company (ACSC), an IT services firm which predominantly hired female engineers and employees. ACSC was initially extremely successful, securing contracts with major institutions including U.S. and Afghan government agencies.

The ACSC would eventually suffer from delayed payments from Afghan government agencies, vandalism, and death threats, prompting Mahboob to partner with an American investor and launch Womens Annex a company that would empower Afghan women to write blogs and generate an income through advertising. Following the realization that the vast majority of women employed by Womens Annexs did not own bank accounts, Mahboob turned to bitcoin, as such comprises a payment vehicle that was able to transcend Afghanistans patriarchal financial institutions.

Womens Annex has led to a significant increase in female adoption of bitcoin in Afghanistan, which in turn allowed many women to access unprecedented levels of financial autonomy. During a recent Blockchain Summit event, Mahboob recounted the story of one woman whose husband always hit her and took all [of her] money from her. After joining Womens Annex and being introduced to cryptocurrency, the woman was able to save enough bitcoin to later [sell] them off and [get] a lawyer to get her divorce, said Mahboob.

Do you think that bitcoin and blockchain technology have an important role to play in the empowerment of women living in patriachal societies? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Digital Citizen Fund

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check ourtoolssection.

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Afghan Entrepreneur Empowers Women Through Bitcoin in Afghanistan - Bitcoin News (press release)

August 13, 2017August 13, 2017 | Kevin Hulbert

Kevin Hulbert Former CIA Chief of Station

There has been a lot of writing lately on Afghanistan as the new administration struggles with what do to there, just as the previous administration struggled mightily to define both the mission and the end game. In the absence of any good ideas, or any solutions, the last administration tragically kicked the can down the road for eight years, pursuing the status quo of a policy pretty much everyone knows has failed.

Obamas advisors told him he faced two broad choices: 1) stay the course, which would cost $50 billion a year and probably continue to go sideways, or 2) pull out of Afghanistan and see it almost immediately dissolve into a problematic festering petri dish of terrorists, like the disaster which is Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, many of President Trumps current advisors are the same unimaginative military guys who have been suggesting the status quo for 16 years.

The bottom line is that there are no easy choices in Afghanistan.

There are no silver bullets but to keep kicking the can down the road, spending about $50 billion a year on the effort and accomplishing little to nothing, cannot be high on President Trumps list of things he wants to do. The President is desperately looking for some alternatives and his military-centric cabinet seems incapable of coming up with anything other than to keep doing the same thing and to maybe surge another 4,000 troops to Afghanistan. Really? 4,000 more troops are going to turn this around? The troop surge is a common military strategy when things are going bad, but its not too creative.

Mikhail Gorbachev tried it when things were going bad for the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It didnt work well for him, either. The Soviets withdrew completely on 15 February 1989.

The idea that the addition of 4,000 new troops in Afghanistan on top of the 8,500 already there is going to make a difference is absurd. We had about 100,000 troops in the country previously and we couldnt win. The whole idea of the troop surge more of the status quo is nonsensical. This is as if you found yourself in charge of running a big black and white TV factory that was doing poorly because the market for black and white TVs had evaporated, but instead of making any changes to the product line, your management consultants advice was to double down on black and white TVs by starting to run a second shift of workers at the plant.

Its like that old line, We dont know where we are and we dont know where we are going, but were making really good time

In his book Dereliction of Duty, now current National Security Advisor LTG H.R. McMaster excoriated a whole generation of U.S. military leadership for not speaking truth to power and for not articulating their objections to the strategy then being used in Vietnam at the behest of Washington politicians. McMaster faulted the military leadership for not having developed good alternatives for policy-makers to what the military leadership knew in their hearts was a failed strategy and one that could not win. McMaster called it an abdication of the Generals professional and civic responsibilities.

What about Afghanistan today? Are we winning? What exactly is victory in Afghanistan? Are we just going to be in Afghanistan forever spending $50 billion a year? Are we going to be doing the nation building role forever, lest Afghanistan slip back into being a hot bed of terrorism? Does anyone have any plan other than to keep doing what we have been doing for the last 16 years, spending untold billions in blood and treasure every year because no one can articulate anything else we might do instead?

The real tragedy is that these bad decisions on the war in Afghanistan have real and lasting consequences. Thousands of young men and women are being sent into harms way in Afghanistan every year with an ill defined mission, in non-combat operations, just waiting to get shot at. The vast majority of our soldiers in Afghanistan never even leave the U.S. base.

There has to be a better way. There has recently been some talk about getting the big U.S. military footprint out of Afghanistan, saving tens of billions of dollars a year, and doing more work with private contractors in conjunction with Afghan forces. Is it a perfect plan? No, but youre not going to find a perfect plan for Afghanistan because if there was one, we would already be doing it. But, I have been surprised at how quick some pundits are to poke holes in the idea while offering zero ideas of their own about what we should do other than the same status quo of the last 16 years. We had better start thinking more broadly about our options in Afghanistan and what the end game there might look like, otherwise some young smart colonel in the war college will be writing a sequel to McMasters book in a few short years titled, Dereliction of Duty II: The Afghanistan Years.

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Dereliction of Duty II: The Afghanistan Years - The Cipher Brief