Mid-Term Blues – The U.K.’s two ruling coalition parties, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, both suffered setbacks in local elections Thursday. The Guardian is live-blogging the results — including for the London …
Afghanistan
Obama’s Afghanistan Plan: Echoes of Vietnam in the U.S. Exit Strategy
To understand the historical significance of President Barack Obama’s visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, imagine that President Richard Nixon had, in the spring of 1972, flown to Saigon to signal American voters that the Vietnam …
Must-Reads From Around the World: April 25, 2012
Must-Reads From Around the World: April 23, 2012
Withdrawal Symptoms – In a pact reached after a year of negotiations between the U.S. and Afghanistan, Washington promised military and financial support for a decade after its formal troop withdrawal from the country in 2014, …
After a Week of Bad News, NATO Talks Endgame in Afghanistan
The shadow of American misdeeds fell over a NATO summit of defense and foreign ministers in Brussels. A visibly irritated Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta apologized for the acts of U.S. soldiers who posed in front of the …
Must-Reads from Around the World, April 19, 2012
No Way Home: In Afghanistan, Former Refugees Are Left Out in the Cold
When Zikariya Nazar Muhammad, 60, embarked on his journey from Karachi in Pakistan to his ancestral home in Afghanistan’s rural interior, he carried a silent hope: that life in his own country would be better than a life of …
Civilian Massacres and Koran Burnings: A Tale of Two Misdeeds in Afghanistan
When mullah Abdul Rahim Shah Ghaa thinks back to the day in February when a couple of Afghan employees at a U.S.-run detention center outside Kabul yanked five partly burned Korans out of a trash incinerator, he shudders with …
The Afghan Massacre Is the Result of War, Not Just One Soldier Going Rogue
For most of the media, the story regarding Staff Sergeant Robert Bales has moved to American soil. The U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians is now under watch at a base in Kansas, with a veritable full-court press …
Talks with the Taliban Are Inevitable, but Who Will Be at the Table?
The fact that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told the Wall Street Journal he’s held three-way negotiations with the U.S. and the Taliban should come as no surprise: the U.S. has said that within two years it will end its …
Must Reads from Around the World: Feb. 2, 2012
Taliban Update – The New York Times follows up on findings in a NATO report, “State of the Taliban 2012” – based on 27,000 interrogations of 4,000 insurgents in Afghanistan – showing resilient fighters “convinced that they …
Pakistan Still Propping Up the Taliban, Alleges Secret NATO Report
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister must have really regretted getting on that flight to Kabul this morning. About the time Hina Rabbani Khar was winging her way over the Hindu Kush for a friendly visit to repair relations between the …
France Not Quitting Afghan Campaign After All
Okay, so not leaving Afghanistan—yet, anyway.
Despite suggestions-cum-threats by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week that he’d consider pulling France’s nearly 3,900 forces out of Afghanistan in response to the …