Holbrooke Turns Page on Karzai Squabble (And Settles the Score)

The Obama administration doesn’t want to fight with Afghan President Hamid Karzai anymore. Amb. Richard Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the U.S.’s relationship with the Afghan president is in “good shape.” That stuff about Karzai threatening to join the Taliban if he didn’t get to control More…

Expect A Civilian NATO Counterpart To McChrystal Later This Month

On a blogger conference call, Adm. James Stavridis, the military commander of NATO, said he was a “100 percent supporter” of a much-debated proposal for the alliance to empower a senior civilian to coordinate diplomatic, political, development and other civilian support to work with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the military commander More…

Peter Galbraith vs. The New York Times

Speaking of ousted United Nations deputy representative to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith, Galbraith was recently accused in a New York Times piece of promoting the ouster of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It’s a really serious accusation. And now Galbraith says, at great length, that there’s no truth to it.

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Who Wants to Be UN Chief in Afghanistan?

After the August electoral impasse destroyed the partnership of Kai Eide and Peter Galbraith, the United Nations’ top diplomats in Afghanistan, it’s been unclear who wants to step into the morass that is the UN mission to Kabul. But Laura Rozen has some answers:

Galbraith: ‘Abdullah Did the Right Thing’ in a ‘Total Fiasco’

I asked Peter Galbraith, the deputy head of the United Nations’ mission to Afghanistan who was deposed for supporting a more rigorous U.N. role in opposing vote fraud in the August 20 elections, what he thought about Abdullah Abdullah’s withdrawal from the runoff. “Abdullah did the right thing,” he More…

Galbraith Gives It Right Back to the U.N.

Fired deputy U.N. special representative to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith publishes an absolutely scathing op-ed in The Washington Post accusing the United Nations of passivity that amounts to complicity in election fraud that, he writes, “handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States More…

Karzai Steals an Election and Peter Galbraith Pays the Price

According to The New York Times, Ambassador Peter Galbraith, the top U.S. official on the United Nations’ Afghanistan mission, has been fired after urging his colleagues — and especially his boss Kai Eide — to take a harder line on addressing the election fraud that marred last month’s presidential More…

U.N. Rift Over Afghan Election Fraud?

I don’t know how much credit to give this Times of London story, but it reports in detail that there was a fight between Kai Eide, the head of the United Nations’ mission to Afghanistan, and the seniormost American in the mission, former Ambassador Peter Galbraith, a lion in More…