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 for [...]

Gabriela Campos, an intern at the Institute for Policy Studies, talks about a compilation of analyses regarding the New Taliban. The book, entitled Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, is edited by Antonio Giustozzi who is a fellow at the London School of Economics. The book asserts that a stronger Neo-Taliban has [...]

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 as the poppy-growing [...]

The United Nations has announced its intention to recall 60 staff members of the organization that constitute its international staff in Pakistan amid growing security concerns in the country. The withdrawal of the U.N workers will be in effect for six months and will not be applicable to the 2,700 Pakistani nationals, currently serving under [...]

Five people were killed and eighty injured in a suicide bombing that took place outside a Shiite religious gathering in the capital of Kashmir, controlled by Pakistan. The bomber detonated the explosives during a security check at a checkpoint. Of the five killed, two have been identified as part of the police force and most [...]

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 [...]

The Afghan surge can’t defeat terrorist ideology, experts say. According to Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, ‘President Obama should have used his speech to declare victory and announce the start of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan instead of an escalation. Even if the surge achieves its immediate mission—at huge cost—the operation won’t achieve its [...]

A high-ranking member of the Taliban insurgent group who is now detained in Pakistan says that he was offered a chance to have a meeting with Osama bin Laden in January or February of this year, and ‘that the al-Qaeda leader is in eastern Afghanistan, not northern Pakistan as widely believed.’ This inmate had [...]

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 to bear, but [...]

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 NATO troops he [...]