UZBEKISTAN: Don’t Let Logistics Trump Rights, Groups Tell Clinton

A broad coalition of 20 human rights, labour and consumer groups is appealing to the administration of President Barack Obama not to renew military aid and sales to Uzbekistan, widely considered one of the world's most repressive dictatorships.

U.S. Knows Pressure on Pakistan Won’t Change Policy

The U.S. threat last week that "all options" are on the table if the Pakistani military doesn't cut its ties with the Haqqani network of anti-U.S. insurgents created the appearance of a crisis involving potential U.S. military escalation in Pakistan.

Polio Spreading Out From Pakistan

Despite two decades of mass oral polio vaccination (OPV) drives, Pakistan has failed to control the crippling paediatric disease. Health authorities now fear that it is exporting the virus and setting back global eradication plans.

New Study Says U.S. Night Raids Aimed at Afghan Civilians

U.S. Special Operations Forces have been increasingly aiming their night-time raids, which have been the primary cause of Afghan anger at the U.S. military presence, at civilian non- combatants in order to exploit their possible intelligence value, according to a new study published by the Open Society Foundation and The Liaison Office.

U.S.-IRAQ: Hawks Fret Over U.S. Withdrawal

Eclipsed by the war in Afghanistan, growing tensions between Israel and its neighbours, and the continuing reverberations of the so-called "Arab Spring", Iraq is inching back into the news here as a debate over the future of U.S. military forces there gathers steam.

Kabul Attack Continues Taliban Control of War Narrative

Gen. David Petraeus wrote in his 2006 counterinsurgency manual that the U.S. command headquarters should establish a "narrative" for the counterinsurgency war – a simple storyline that provides a framework for understanding events, both for the population of the country in question and for international audiences.

NATO-Led Forces Secure Kabul After Attacks

Afghan and NATO forces have ended their assault on Taliban fighters, 20 hours after the group launched coordinated attacks in Kabul, targeting NATO's headquarters, the U.S. embassy and the Afghan intelligence agency.

PAKISTAN: 9/11 Legacy – An AK-47 in Every Home

The United States-led war-on terror, unleashed on Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, has utterly destabilised the neighbouring Pashtun-dominated tribal areas of Pakistan and reduced them to a state of utter lawlessness.

Washington Warned Against Lifting Aid Curbs

As a high-ranking Uzbek delegation wound up talks with senior U.S. officials here Wednesday, human rights groups urged the administration of President Barack Obama not to lift seven- year-old restrictions on Washington's aid to Tashkent in exchange for a new agreement on using Uzbek territory to transport "non-lethal" supplies to and from Afghanistan.

PAKISTAN: Dodging Drones and Bullets to Beat HIV

Having to contend with U.S. army drones and the crossfire between the Taliban and the Pakistani army, the residents of Pakistan’s tribal areas find access to treatment for HIV/AIDS harder than in most other parts of the world.

Post-9/11 Rebuffs Set U.S.-Iran Relations on Downward Spiral

Of all the mistakes and missed opportunities that have characterised U.S. foreign policy since Sep. 11, 2001, few may have been as consequential as the failure to improve relations with Iran.

CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

Afghan Security Faces Long-Term Challenges

U.S.-led efforts to build Afghan security forces capable of preventing Taliban resurgence face a series of challenges, from the reluctance of southern Pashtuns to serve in a national army, to maintaining the billions of dollars in infrastructure and equipment provided by the U.S. and other foreign countries over the past decade.

CANADA: Hawkish Foreign Policy at Odds with Popular Priorities

Canada has flexed its military muscles, first in Afghanistan for nine years alongside NATO forces, and now in Libya in its supply of ships and combat planes for the rebel forces, but little debate has happened on the ground among Canadians themselves on this direction.

PAKISTAN: Gem of a Plan Against Taliban

Mining gems and other valuable minerals may provide, the Pakistan government hopes, alternate careers to militancy in the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), bordering Afghanistan.

PAKISTAN: Videogames Pictured Killing the Innocent

‘Gaming in Waziristan’, a current photo exhibition, graphically supports charges that drone strikes carried out by the United States military and intelligence in Pakistan’s tribal areas kill more civilians than Taliban.

Ex-PM Says Taliban Offer Talks For Pullout Date

The Taliban leadership is ready to negotiate peace with the United States right now if Washington indicates its willingness to provide a timetable for complete withdrawal, according to a former Afghan prime minister who set up a secret meeting between a senior Taliban official and a U.S. general two years ago.

India-Pakistan Rivalry Afghanistan’s “Gordian Knot”

U.S. hopes to withdraw forces and leave behind a stable Afghanistan may rest on whether Pakistan and India can lower bilateral tensions and refrain from using Afghan territory for a new proxy war.

PAKISTAN: Taliban Backs Off From Attacking Civilians

A series of Taliban attacks selectively targeting Pakistani security forces is being seen as an attempt to shore up the flagging popularity of the fundamentalist Islamic scholars.

PAKISTAN: Study Rebuts U.S. Claims of “No Civilian Deaths”

As the Pakistani public grows increasingly outraged at the United States' drone attacks in the northwest region of the country, a recent study by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism is contradicting U.S. officials' insistence that "not a single civilian life" has been claimed in the covert war.

Execution Videos Strike Terror in Pakistan

A video showing a group of 16 Pakistani policemen, hands tied behind their backs, being executed by Taliban gunmen in the Dir district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is only the latest in a series showing brutal acts designed to strike terror in the areas bordering Afghanistan.