gul agha shirzai

For a really excellent facts-on-the-ground view of Afghanistan, don’t miss defense wonk Nick Dowling’s series of posts at Small Wars Journal. Take a look at his trip through Nangahar, the province run by warlord Gul Agha Shirzai:
Sherzai is practically a caricature of the Afghan warlord: a former Muj against the Russians, he combines ruthlessness with [...]

Here’s a rigorously reported piece on the history of the relationship between the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai — as you’ll see from the piece, we only have a U.S.-Afghan relationship as a derivative effect — from Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It suggests this must be a perplexing time for Karzai: he spent the last [...]

The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Rosenberg (with aid from Yochi Dreazen) has a piece that I can’t recommend strongly enough: a profile of Gul Agha Shirzai, the “former” warlord who might end up replacing Hamid Karzai, that asks whether the alternative to a weak government of technocrats is a government of warlords.  That gloss is [...]