US puts Taliban on the run

Vice President Mike Pence told US troops in Afghanistan Thursday that they have put the Taliban on the run, as he became the most senior Trump administration official to visit the men and women fighting America's longest-ever war.

Flying secretly through the day and night on a standard unmarked US Air Force C-17 transport plane, Pence corkscrewed into Bagram Airfield on the unannounced visit to thank some of the roughly 15,000 US personnel still hoping to turn the tide in the conflict, now in its 17th year.

The superpower's vexed campaign against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- born from the rubble of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington -- receives ever-less public attention in the United States these days.

"The American people deserve to know that with the courage of everyone gathered here, we're making real progress in this fight for freedom in Afghanistan," Pence told the troops.

"We've dramatically increased American air strikes. And together with our Afghan partners, we've put the Taliban on the defensive," he said, also pointing at efforts to target the drug trafficking networks that help fund the Taliban.

"All across this country we've won new victories against the terrorists, no matter what they call themselves or where they try to hide."

The vice president also aimed a jab at neighboring Pakistan -- reiterating word for word Trump's warning that it must stop offering cross-border safe havens to Taliban factions and armed jihadist groups fighting US troops and their Afghan allies.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed Humvee into a police compound in Afghanistan yesterday, killing at least six officers and destroying a building, officials said.