The Senate Armed Services Committee just announced a hearing next Tuesday morning to get a status update on Afghanistan war strategy. Testifying will be two of the strategy’s architects: Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy; and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Central and South More…
Thanks to al-Jazeera, footage has emerged of what may be a nascent or exploratory peace negotiation between the Afghan government, the Taliban and a Taliban affiliate and longtime guerilla leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
For months, there have been occasional reports of representatives from the parties to the conflict — one stretching More…
Yesterday, I cited a blind quote in a McClatchy story from a Defense Department official. It raised doubts that the force levels anticipated for Kandahar’s “rising tide” — 20,350 NATO and Afghan troops by September — are sufficient to protect the population from insurgents. “None of this makes any More…
A Taliban operative driving a car bomb attacked a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital today, killing at least six U.S. and allied troops and at least 12 Afghan civilians. The Associated Press:
The powerful blast occurred on a major Kabul thoroughfare that runs by the ruins of a
Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a “rising tide of security” taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively More…
This New York Times piece about farmers in Marja voting with their feet is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that the “holding” phase of February’s massive NATO/Afghan invasion of the Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province is going poorly:
Over 150 families have fled Marja in the last two
The presidential communique has been issued. A longer-term “Strategic Partnership Declaration” will follow by the end of the year. But the most important and immediate result of this week’s visit to Washington by Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a consensus each side will claim for two “processes”: one for outreach More…
The leak I got yesterday from Kandahar expressing skepticism that counterinsurgency can bring the nine-year war in Afghanistan to a successful conclusion has inspired another one. This time, a former CIA counterterrorism operative who has served on the ground in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq agreed to pass along a More…
Nathan Hodge reports for Danger Room that the U.S. military has put out a solicitation for a contract worth up to $25 million to build “three new detention housing units” next to what used to be called the Bagram prison in Afghanistan. This comes as Presidents Obama and More…
It’s time for a post-White House press conference listicle.
1. Unity, Stand Together as One. The priority message that “I will take back with me to the Afghan people,” in President Hamid Karzai’s words, was the “strong, steady, long-term relationship with America.” Whatever turbulence exists in the relationship between Washington More…
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