Doubling of SOF Night Raids Backfired in Kandahar

During a round of media interviews last month, Gen. David Petraeus released totals for the alleged results of nearly 3,000 "night raids" by Special Operations Forces (SOF) units over the 90 days from May through July: 365 "insurgent leaders" killed or captured, 1,355 Taliban "rank and file" fighters captured, and 1,031 killed.

Petraeus Spin on IED War Belied by Soaring Casualties

Gen. David Petraeus claimed limited success this week in the war within a war over the Taliban's planting of roadside bombs, but official Pentagon data shows the Taliban clearly winning that war by planting more bombs and killing many more U.S. and NATO troops since the troop surge began in early 2010.

US-AFGHANISTAN: Calls for Change of Strategy Grow Louder

Amid continued high levels of violence and a steady stream of reports of high-level government corruption in Kabul, a growing number of foreign policy specialists are urging President Barack Obama to reconsider his counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Not Much Good News for the Media

Good news has become harder to come by these days in Afghanistan, especially as the war-ravaged country gears up for the parliamentary election scheduled on Sep. 18.

Billion Dollar Audit Missed by Pentagon Watchdog

Military auditors failed to complete an audit of the business systems of an Ohio- based company - Mission Essential Personnel - even though it had billed for one billion dollars worth of work largely in Afghanistan over the last four years.

US-MIDEAST: Light At End of Tunnel Elusive, Despite Obama’s Efforts

President Barack Obama will try this week to underline his progress in extricating the United States from the morass his predecessor's "global war on terror" in the Greater Middle East.

Media Didn’t Buy Petraeus Command’s Story of Low Taliban Morale

In an effort to introduce a story of "progress" into media coverage, Gen. David Petraeus’s command claimed last week that the Taliban is suffering from reduced morale in Marjah and elsewhere, despite evidence that the population of Marjah still believes the Taliban controls that district.

AFGHANISTAN: Ouster of Contractors Throws U.S. Strategy in Doubt

Charging that U.S. private security contractors are "mafia- like groups" being financed by U.S. taxpayers to carry out "terrorist activities" with the support of the U.S. government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a four- month phaseout of all private security companies in his embattled country.

AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 42 and Task Force 121, the Other Secret Killers – Part 3

When Wikileaks, a whistleblower website, released 76,000 incident reports from the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the exploits of a secret military "capture/kill" team called Task Force 373 was revealed for the first time.

AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 373, the Secret Killers – Part 2

When Danny Hall and Gordon Phillips, the civilian and military directors of the U.S. provincial reconstruction team in Nangahar Province, Afghanistan arrived for a meeting with Gul Agha Sherzai, the local governor, in mid-June 2007, they knew that they had a lot of apologising to do.

AFGHANISTAN: Task Force 373, the Secret Killers – Part 1

"Find, fix, finish, and follow-up" - also known as F4 - is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these "manhunting" operations and the units assigned to them "capture/kill" teams.

US: Standing Up for Homeless Vets at Stand Downs

More than 400 homeless veterans from across northern California relaxed in comfort at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton.

Despite Iraq Withdrawal, Greater Mideast Not Looking Good

While President Barack Obama Monday touted the continuing U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq as a key marker in the success of his regional policies, the latest news from the Greater Middle East, as well as a new public opinion survey, is far less encouraging.

Pakistan Poll Finds Widespread Disillusionment

The recent Wikileaks dump of war-related documents has brought little new to the debate over Washington's ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan, but allegations that Pakistan's intelligence services are aiding the Taliban has brought renewed attention to U.S. concerns over its reliance on Islamabad in battling Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.

Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy Increasingly Under Siege

Monday's release by WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of classified documents detailing the travails of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Pakistan's secret support for the Taliban from 2004 through 2009 comes amid a growing crisis of confidence here in the nearly nine-year-old war.

Leaked Reports Make Afghan War Policy More Vulnerable

The 92,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks, and reported Monday by the Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, offer no major revelations that are entirely new, as did the Pentagon Papers to which they are inevitably being compared.

Right-Wing Agenda Slips Through Canada’s Political Deadlock

Canada's parliament is so broken and dysfunctional that the country is in danger of becoming "the laughing stock" of the world.

McChrystal Probe of SOF Killings Excluded Key Eyewitnesses

The follow-up investigation of a botched Special Operations Forces (SOF) raid in Gardez Feb. 12 that killed two male government officials and three female civilians, ordered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal Apr. 5, was ostensibly aimed at reconciling divergent Afghan and U.S. accounts of what happened during and after the raid.

Inspectors Call Afghan Police Tracking System a Failure

A system designed to track the success of Afghan police training is deeply flawed, says a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR).

US-AFGHANISTAN: What Now?

Nearly a week after the abrupt demise of Washington's top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. strategy for reversing the flood of bad news that has been recently pouring out of that strife-torn country remains as unclear as ever.

POLITICS: All Quiet on the Australian Front on Role in Afghanistan

The lack of debate here concerning Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan is unlikely to change in the near future despite the recent deaths of five Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel in the war-ravaged nation.