RIGHTS: U.S. Military Unveils New Prison in Afghanistan

The U.S. military has announced the opening of a new prison on Bagram Air Base. The prison, costing 60 million dollars, will hold up to 1,100 prisoners at any one time.

AFGHANISTAN: Corruption Fight Begins, Again

When the Independent Election Commission announced that Hamid Karzai would be president for another five years, local and international powers began to demand that the newly re-elected president clamp down on the corruption that had spread like a virus throughout his administration and the ministries.

POLITICS: Singh State Visit Cements US-India Ties

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President Barack Obama met in Washington Tuesday as both leaders sought to reinvigorate the U.S.-India bilateral relationship.

POLITICS: Afghan Army Turnover Rate Threatens U.S. War Plans

One in every four combat soldiers quit the Afghan National Army (ANA) during the year ending in September, published data by the U.S. Defence Department and the Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan reveals.

POLITICS: Realities Collide at Halifax “War Conference”

While the world's top military elites gather inside a fortified hotel to discuss NATO's future, protesters question the organisation's legitimacy, secrecy, and the lack of democratic debate about the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Insurgents Infiltrate Security Forces

A Taliban fighter infiltrated the Afghan police force, killing seven Afghan officers and British soldiers. Similar attacks have taken the lives of U.S. troops.

Q&A: “Karzai Assigned a Rabbit to Take Care of the Carrot”

In the aftermath of national elections widely condemned as fraudulent, the United States and its allies are wondering what to do about Afghanistan.

U.S.: Obama Returns to Greater Middle East Mess

As Barack Obama arrives home from his weeklong tour of East Asia, he confronts a growing list of ever more urgent problems in the Greater Middle East that he inherited from George W. Bush's "global war on terror".

AFGHANISTAN: Black & Veatch’s White Elephant in Kabul

In a secluded valley a few miles from Kabul's international airport, Caterpillar turbines custom-built in Germany and giant transformers flown in from Mexico hum away at a brand-new power plant.

CORRUPTION: Paying Off Afghanistan’s Warlords

Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

CORRUPTION: Afghanistan, Iraq Near Bottom of Transparency Index

Despite billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and other countries to improve governance in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two countries remain among the world's most corrupt nations, according to the latest edition of Transparency International's (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

AGRICULTURE: Exporting Afghanistan

The 60 hectare stretch of farmland in north Kabul's Badam Bagh neighbourhood looks much like farmland all over this country. Colourful rows of neatly planted crops stretch out from a dusty road and up the gentle slope of an arid ridge.

U.S.: Army Underreporting Suicides, Says GI Advocacy Group

According to a soldiers' advocacy group at Fort Hood, the U.S. base where an army psychiatrist has been charged with killing 13 people and wounding 30 in a Nov. 5 rampage, the official suicide figures provided by the Army are "definitely" too low.

U.S.: Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

POLITICS: Corruption in Afghanistan Cuts Both Ways

Unfortunately for both Afghans and Americans, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama, his counterpart in Washington, missed a chance to reset the critical relationship between their two countries and move the dialogue in an honest direction.

POLITICS: U.S. Seeks to Limit Warlords in Karzai Cabinet

The Barack Obama administration is talking tough to Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the need for decisive action on corruption and governance reform, but its main objective is to prevent particularly corrupt and incompetent warlords from getting plum ministries as rewards for helping clinch his fraudulent reelection, IPS has learned.

U.S.: Obama’s Outreach to Muslim World Teetering

U.S. President Barack Obama's extraordinary efforts since his first days in office to reassure Muslims in the Greater Middle East about U.S. intentions in the region have suffered a series of setbacks that threaten to reverse whatever gains he has made over the past 10 months in restoring Washington's badly battered image and influence there.

AFGHANISTAN: Teenagers Enlist in Army, Police

Niamatullah joined the Afghan National Police (ANP) for the same reasons that many Afghan men do.

AFGHANISTAN: Abdullah Plays For Time

Soon after President Hamid Karzai acceded to a runoff two weeks ago, challenger Abdullah Abdullah put forward an avalanche of requests so complex, that his objective remains unclear.

AFGHANISTAN: NATO Supporting Insurgents? Not Exactly

The U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) have spent billions of dollars, sacrificed hundreds of lives and worked for years to fight insurgents and foster democracy in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: U.S., NATO Forces Rely on Warlords for Security

The revelation by the New York Times Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has long been on the payroll of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is only the tip of a much bigger iceberg of heavy dependence by U.S. and NATO counterinsurgency forces on Afghan warlords for security, according to a recently published report and investigations by Australian and Canadian journalists.