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BOSTON -- Just looking at Brandon Korona, you would never guess what he is about to do.

"I'm at peace with it. My family's at peace with it," Korona said. "And my friends think I'm crazy."

CBS News

He asked doctors to cut off his lower left leg. Four years after it was crushed by a land mine in Afghanistan, he gave up on trying to save it.

"It was all rods, screws and some bone that didn't grow back right It looked like a leg, but it wasn't a leg," he said.

Dr. Matthew Carty amputated Korona's leg in a six-hour operation at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital in Boston. He used a new procedure that could reinvent the science of amputations.

CBS News

"In the past all that has been asked of an amputated limb is to provide an adequate padding surface in order for a prosthetic to be adequately mounted," Carty said.

The new procedure connects the leg's front and back muscles to each other, allowing them to keep working together and communicate about it with the brain.

"And that is what enables us to walk normally without having to constantly look at our feet," Carty said.

The surgery is experimental. Korona is the first veteran and only the second patient to undergo this kind of amputation.

The goal is to connect Korona's stump to a new generation of smart prosthetics, now under development at MIT, that would move like a human foot.

"If we can elevate amputation to an equivalent form of salvage or an equivalent form of therapy, that in some ways is a major win for patients," Carty said.

Brandon Korona after his surgery

CBS News

Two weeks after Korona's surgery, all that was left of his lower left leg were the screws that used to hold it together, in a plastic container.

"I'm happy that I have lost my leg and I'm ready to start recovering again," Koronasaid.

If the new procedure doesn't work, then he will use a standard prosthetic. Either way, the ruined leg that has been running his life for the last four years is gone.

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PESHAWAR: A relative of ex-prime minister of Afghanistan Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Haji Fareed, was shot dead in Pishtakhara area of Peshawar in the early hours of Tuesday.

According to the police, Fareed was coming out of a mosque in Tajabad area in Pishtakhara when unidentified persons opened fire, killing him on the spot.

Fareed, who has also served as the secretary of Hekmatyar, had recently returned from Afghanistan. He was related to Hekmatyar by law as him daughter was married to the latters son.

Afghan scholars in Peshawar have been targeted in the past as well.

According to an Afghan news agency, Pajhwok, three scholars were killed in 2016 by unidentified person in Peshawar.

The triple murder had taken place after Fridays prayers, an Afghan refugee, Azizullah, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

Unidentified gunmen had opened fire at a seminary in the area, killing the madrasa head, Maulvi Ghulam Hazrat, his father and another scholar, Sheikh Ilyas.

Azizullah said the religious scholars were residents of Pachiragam district of eastern Nangarhar province, who had been living in Peshawar for the last three decades.

A man, who wished to go unnamed, said the slain scholars belonged to Pir Saif-ur-Rahman religious group in Bara area of Peshawar where the group has been engaged in a bloody rivalry with another group over the past several years.

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Relative of Afghanistan's ex-PM killed in Peshawar - Geo News, Pakistan

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.

The first American war casualty in Afghanistan was Alabama native Mike Spann. Spann, from Winfield, was murdered by the Taliban in 2001.

His daughter, Alison Spann, spoke at Tuscaloosa's Memorial Day program Monday.

This Memorial Day, she urged the crowd to remember the families of fallen soldiers.

Alison Spann currently works with two scholarship programs, the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation and the CIA Memorial Scholarship Foundation, ensuring the children of fallen servicemen and servicewomen receive good educations.

"It's really hard when a father or mother dies and leaves the other parent alone with three, four, even one kid to provide the basic essentials like education. So those specific projects are really close to my heart because I want to make sure all of those families are provided for," she told ABC 33/40 News.

Alison Spann said her father's legacy was putting God, family, and country first. He also always wanted to help others. She said he was passionate about freeing the people of Afghanistan from Taliban rule.

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Daughter of Afghanistan war hero speaks in Tuscaloosa | WBMA - Alabama's News Leader

HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in American history. Its been almost 17 years since the United States invaded in retaliation for the September 11th terrorist attacks carried out by al Qaeda, the terrorist group harbored at the time by the Taliban-led government.

To date, 2,396 American military personnel, along with 1,136 coalition soldiers have died in the war. So have an estimated 170- thousand fighters and civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Now, with the Taliban having regained control of 40 percent of the country, the Trump administration is contemplating a surge of 5,000 U.S. troops to add to the more than 8,000 still there.

Joining me here to discuss this is Barnett Rubin, associate director of New York Universitys Center on International Cooperation. He previously worked in the Obama State Department.

Thanks for joining us.

So, how do we get there? Why are we still 17 years out and were talking about our adversary controlling 40 percent of the country?

BARNETT RUBIN, NEW YORK UNIVERSITYS CENTER ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION: We never really defined what we were trying to accomplish. We had a long list of goals which were capturing and killing terrorists, and we were never exactly what are the boundary around that category was and trying to stabilize Afghanistan. Those two missions got in their way. We were distracted by Iraq. We never really had an adequate understanding of what the problem was, and we did not pay attention to the region around Afghanistan which has changed very radically in the 16 years or so that we have been there.

SREENIVASAN: It seems like theres almost sort of two goals now that are countering each other. I mean, you can either stabilize the country or you can root out the terrorists.

RUBIN: You can have a permanent U.S. military presence there to try to strike at terrorists and other enemies and so on in the region or you can try and stabilize the country, because the country cannot be stabilized with a permanent presence of U.S. troops because most of the countries of the region dont want us there and they let us know that by supporting the Taliban.

SREENIVASAN: What did the Obama administration get wrong?

RUBIN: Well, of course I was there. I would I would, in my opinion, the big mistakes were, one, when Obama announced a troop surge, he should not have given a date for withdrawing it. And two, when he announced the troop surge, that was the time when he should have made very far-reaching offers of a negotiated settlement. Unfortunately, our military and many others in the government believe that you shouldnt make any offers of negotiated settlement until you have already succeeded militarily. But that is too late. You have to do it when you are when your capacities are increasing.

And Im afraid they are about to make the same mistake now. Theyre going to they want to add administer troops and then they say once when they are stronger, they will make some they will make some kind of offer of negotiation.

SREENIVASAN: Wouldnt the 5,000 troops make a difference?

RUBIN: Of course, 5,000 troops will make some difference, but they will make only a marginal difference. They might stop the erosion of the stalemate as it is now as if you say, these estimates are all very dubious, but lets say the Taliban control approximately 40 percent of the population. Well, maybe with 5,000 troops, we could get that down to 30 percent or 25 percent. That would not be decisive in any way.

And then, of course, our troops are not going to be there forever. No matter how many times we tell people that were committed, everyone knows that we are not going to be in Afghanistan longer than the Afghans. So, they can wait us out.

So, there is no alternative to working towards a political settlement not just with the Taliban but with the countries of the region now, immediately.

SREENIVASAN: We have been talking about policy, what about the people in the ground that are somehow living through this? I mean, this kind of seesaw between a local or provincial government control and then back and forth to the Taliban control?

RUBIN: From the point of view of the people in Afghanistan, this war has been going on for almost 40 years, since there was a coup detat in 1978. And you gave numbers about the numbers of people who have been killed and injured again, thats the last 16 years. People believe a million or more people may have been killed over the last 40 years, including the period of the Soviet intervention. So, this has really its been a terrible agony that the people of Afghanistan have gone through for a long time. Of course, they have become very resilient and those of them who arent killed, find ways of adapting but its becoming more and more difficult for them.

SREENIVASAN: All right. Barnett Rubin, associate director of New York Universitys Center on International Cooperation thanks for joining us.

RUBIN: Thank you.

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Trump considering sending more troops to Afghanistan | PBS ... - PBS NewsHour

U.S Senator John McCain said the United States President Donald Trump has great confidence in the team which is developing the strategy.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, has said that U.S President Donald Trump's national security team is developing a strategy that will lead to victory in Afghanistan, Reuters reported.

He said Trump has great confidence in that team.

"I do believe that most of the time he accepts their advice and counsel. Can I tell you that he does all the time? No. And yes, does it bothers me? Yes, it bothers me," he said.

Meanwhile, he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bigger threat to global security than Daesh, and warned that the U.S Senate would push for sanctions against Moscow for its alleged interference in the Unites States election, he said in a debate in Australia.

"I think he (Putin) is the premier and most important threat, more so than ISIS (Daesh)," McCain said.

He said while there was no evidence the Russians succeeded in changing the U.S election outcome, they were still trying to change elections, including the recent French vote.

"I view the Russians as the far greatest challenge that we have," he added.

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Trump's Developing Strategy 'Will Lead To Victory In Afghanistan' - TOLOnews