said jawad

Here’s a portion of a press release issued by Said Jawad, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington, to mark the recent rise in U.S. military fatalities in his country:
I would like to convey our most sincere condolences to the friends and families of each of those that have fallen in Afghanistan. Our thoughts and prayers are with [...]

Mother Jones’ Bruce Falconer has a great story about a memo that Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., sent in April to Kabul pleading for more money to hire lobbyists, lest Afghanistan’s interests suffer from the glut of lobbyists hired by Pakistan and India. According to Jawad’s estimates in the memo, Pakistan spends [...]

Last month, the Afghan government sent a delegation to Washington to advise the White House strategy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several delegates expressed some fears that the Obama administration would adopt a “reductionist” approach to Afghanistan.
Now take a look at this statement, released this morning by Afghan Ambassador Said Jawad. Notice that the Afghan [...]

Afghan Ambassador Said Jawad doesn’t like people saying candidly that his government and its NATO partners aren’t winning the war against the Taliban-led insurgency, but there’s little other way to describe this anecdote, reported in an excellent piece from The Washington Post on Sunday about southern Afghanistan:
When a man came to police headquarters recently to [...]

Consider this one unverified, but The Australian (h/t Small Wars Journal) is reporting that Capital-T Taliban leader Mullah Omar has reversed his position on negotiating a peace deal with the Karzai government:

“Mullah Omar has given the green light to talks,” said one of the mediators, Abdullah Anas, a former friend of Osama bin Laden who [...]

At 6 p.m., Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, is scheduled to give a speech at Harvard University outlining what the Afghan government wants a new U.S. approach to the seven-and-a-half-year war to look like. Much of what he is expected to say was outlined by the Afghan cabinet-officers’ delegation to Washington [...]

Interesting luncheon at the White House today. A host of Afghan cabinet officials dropped by to brief the Obama administration’s Af-Pak strategy review.

While President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review gets underway in earnest, several Afghan ministers are on their way to Washington for meetings with the Obama administration and Congress. Practically the entire Karzai government is headed in: Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and his top adviser Davood Moradian; Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak; Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif [...]