Tag Archives : NATO

U.S. authorities are turning to explain a possible missile launch on the coast of Los Angeles, but one day after the smoke trail have been filmed, the incident remains a mystery, said a spokesman for the Pentagon said Tuesday. The apparent release of a missile was spotted by a camera in a helicopter station KCBS on Monday night. The video shows a rising [...]

Ever since the US has started to build the missile shields in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia has been extremely wary and sceptical of the build up. Russia suspects that it might harm its sovereignty and is being seen as an American incursion into areas under Russian influence. NATO believes that the American missile shields are necessary to protect [...]

In Council on Foreign Relations, Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor of CFR.org, interviews Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, CFR. Boot sums up the Marjah offensive as US troops ‘trying to take out probably the biggest remaining Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, which has been a safe haven not only [...]

Yvonne Ridley, a British Journalist and author of In The Hands of the Taliban, boldly asserts in counterpunch that the huge military offensive codenamed Operation Moshtarak that caused the evacuation of residents in the town of Marjah in Afghanistan is ethnic cleansing. The purported ISAF pacification offensive grandly launched in what is described [...]

Afghanistan’s Kunduz province had been earlier evaluated as secure that is why troops were moved to other hotspots. Now, with US and Afghan forces concentrated on the southern regions of Afghanistan, the Taliban have returned to the northern Kunduz province. In fact, ‘the Taliban is now threatening a key route bringing NATO supplies from Central [...]

Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan has less to do with military action than ‘turning the war over to the Afghans.’ ‘The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s new strategy in Afghanistan, and consequently in Pakistan, has three core elements: ‘maintain pressure on al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani border and in other regions of the world;’ ‘blunt the Taliban offensive by sending an additional 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan, along with an unspecified number of [...]

A recent report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) ‘muddies the water on one of the most important issues in the debate — the effects of Afghanistan’s drug production.’ Entitled Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium, the report ‘gives the false impression that the Taliban are the main culprits [...]

US President Obama’s decision to send 30k troops to Afghanistan will ‘determine the outcome of the eight-year U.S. engagement in Afghanistan and perhaps even the broader state-building process.’ The fresh troop surge points to ‘gradual expansion of the international military mission under McChrystal’s strategy.’ Even the American general [...]

General McChrystal does not get his ‘40,000 new troops in order to hold the “major” cities and secure the population from the Taliban.’ He only gets a part of it. Obama did very recently order for additional troops to Afghanistan, but only about 75 percent of McChrystal’s request. McChrystal’s plan, though, is by no means crystal [...]