Outlandish posturing on foreign policy matters is par for the course in a U.S. electoral season, but the claim that President Barack Obama will deliver Iraq on a plate to Iran by honoring the U.S. treaty obligation to withdraw American troops by New Year’s Day is worth closer scrutiny. It might be said that Obama’s critics, many of whom …
Afghanistan
Fox Outfoxed: Fresh Revelations Force U.K. Defense Secretary to Quit
Liam Fox must have realized he could not outrun his fate. And so on Oct. 14 Britain’s Secretary of State for Defense delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street. “I have repeatedly said that the national interest must always come before personal interest,” he wrote. “I now have to hold myself to my own standard.”
Fox’s resignation …
Mining for Silver Bullets: Why Afghan Minerals Won’t Save the Country
The future of Afghanistan can be seen in a lump of lustrous black rock showcased on Wahidullah Shahrani’s bookshelf. Or so he would have me believe. The energetic minister of mines has spent the past half hour elucidating the potentials of the rich iron deposit in the mountainous province of Bamiyan from which that rock comes. He …
Couch Potato Briefing: Ten Years of War in Afghanistan
The return of the Couch Potato Briefing marks the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwglCgW0H8M&feature=player_embedded]
Kandahar
The International Crisis Group released in August a comprehensive report detailing the continued failure of President Hamid Karzai’s government …
With All Eyes on Apple, It’s Easy to Forget Afghanistan
Every day, Mother Jones, an American magazine, publishes a photograph from a war zone or military base. The pictures, taken in places like Ramadi, Iraq, or Kabul, Afghanistan, are labeled with the date, the location and a bracing tagline: “We’re still at war.” Indeed, today marks 10 years since the beginning of the U.S.-led war in …
Should the U.S. Deem Pakistan a State Sponsor of Terrorism?
It seems not a week goes by without more accusations heaped upon Pakistan’s controversial military intelligence agency, the ISI. The shadowy agency, seen by many as an enabler and tacit ally of militant extremists and terrorist groups in South Asia, had just been in headlines following a Taliban assault on the U.S. embassy and …
The Endgame in Afghanistan: How Do We End the Proxy Wars?
When top U.S. military officer Adm. Mike Mullen described the Haqqani Network as a “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency,” to the U.S. Senate on Thursday you could almost hear the ‘I told you so’ chorus echoing all the way from Afghanistan. Mullen accused the ISI of fighting a proxy war in …
The Afghan Government Needs Reconciliation with Its People, Not with the Taliban
For the past several months, reconciliation with the Taliban has emerged as a key pillar of the American exit strategy. A political end to the insurgency, combined with a strengthened Afghan security force, better governance and enhanced economic structures were supposed to pave the way towards the dignified withdrawal that is …
More U.S.-Pakistan Kabuki Over Islamabad’s Terror Ties
Last week’s Taliban assault on the U.S. embassy and other prominent ministerial buildings in Kabul brought into relief once more the brazen conviction of militants in war-blighted Afghanistan as well as their considerable tactical capabilities in pulling off the raid. U.S. diplomats quickly pointed the finger at the al-Qaeda-linked …
The Assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani: An End To Reconciliation?
In Afghanistan, the turban transcends tribe. It is worn by all ethnic groups, from the Tajiks and Uzbeks that dominate the north, to the Pashtuns who reside in the south. The Taliban wear turbans, but so do the tribal militias fighting them. Though out of fashion among the young and urban, it is still the symbol of a man’s honor …
With Forceful Messaging, Can the U.S. Alienate the Taliban?
When militants serving the Haqqani Network attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008, killing 54, it took several months for suspicions to leak out that the group may have been behind the attack. Not so with last week’s commando-style assault on the U.S. Embassy and other sites in the capital. Within hours Afghan officials were …
How Did Other Countries “Lose” in Libya?
In TIME’s international editions, Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican Foreign Minister, rates the “winners and losers” of the Libyan imbroglio, praising Western leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British P.M. David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama for pressing for intervention. Countries that abstained from action …
Even as He Clashes With Israel, Turkey’s Erdogan is Displacing Iran’s Influence
The handwringing in the U.S. over the rock-star reception Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is eliciting on his “Arab Spring” tour of post-dictatorship Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is misguided. Erdogan represents a reality-based, credible and very popular incarnation of the old Bush Administration idea of a moderate Middle …