Afghanistan

By Guest Blogger Johanna Teeri The New York Times reported on Sunday that the NATO forces in the town of Marja no longer seek to eradicate the poppy fields, as they are trying to build support among the villagers rather than destroy more livelihoods. While the new burst of conflict-sensitivity is welcome, the real conundrum...
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One of the reasons to invade Afghanistan was to liberate the population from the medieval rule of the Taliban. In most senses that has happened, as the Taliban is only strong in pockets and has recently been facing a military surge. All of that being said, there has been rising discomfort that the new...
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It appears that the Marjah offensive is working militarily, and that is good news. Whenever the U.S. military is successful, I’m usually happy and relieved. However, it looks like the military victory was the easy part and that managing and governing the area looks to be the long slog. The news just seems...
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It’s official: the U.S. military, led by the Marines, have ramped up a new offensive in Afghanistan in order to make the country more secure. Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, near Kandahar, is the locus of this new offensive. Long a Taliban stronghold, the south of the country has been the most risky...
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It appears that bribery and corruption in Afghanistan are much more widespread than I had originally believed. While watching The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, a UN report mentioned shed light on the problem plaguing Afghanistan today. According to the UN’s Office of Drugs and Crime, Afghanistan spends US$2.5 BILLION each year on bribery...
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On January 12, the Palestinian-owned daily Al-Quds al-Arabi carried the following lead editorial (original source in Arabic, translated into English by MidEastWire): “The treatment of Muslims in American airports” The United States of America has adopted stricter security measures in its airports and border passageways, following the uncovering of the failed attempt to detonate a civilian...
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Hamid Karzai is yet again the President of Afghanistan, and he didn’t even need to rig the election to do it this time. After two and a half months of confusion and negotiation, Presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the run-off election slated for next weekend. Believing that he would not win,...
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David Rohde, the New York Times journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban and held for 7 months has a five-part series documenting his terrifying ordeal. The series ran all last week in the Times, and despite the terrible circumstances of Rohde’s kidnapping, it’s an incredibly exciting and gripping account to read. Joel Simon of...
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Recent elections in Iran and Afghanistan have one very important thing in common: very strong evidence of fraud. This should not be very surprising, but it should give pause in that some areas of both countries saw turnout greater than the actual number of voters. While Iran does not put up too much...
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Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and the forthcoming Stones in Schools spoke last night at the Stern School of Business in New York. Here are a few highlights: • The Pennies for Peace program of Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute is a grassroots campaign started by school kids to donate pennies to build schools,...
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