US/AFGHANISTAN: Deadly Assault Could Alter Campaign Dynamics

If nothing else, the deaths Sunday of nine U.S. soldiers at a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border are likely to bring home to the U.S. electorate what top national security officials have been saying for much of the past year - that the central front in Washington's "global war on terrorism" has moved eastwards about 1,800 kms from Iraq.

PAKISTAN: Two Journalists Kidnapped on Restive Border

The abduction Friday of two Pakistani journalists representing the New York Times (NYT) in troubled Mohmand Agency by pro-Taliban fighters has put the spotlight on a spate of kidnappings for ransom that has swept the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan.

POLITICS-US: Vets Mull Wins and Losses in Benefits Fight

You could hear the joy in Patrick Campbell's voice as he reflected on U.S. President George W. Bush's signing Monday of a new GI Bill of Rights for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

/UPDATE*/POLITICS-US: Afghanistan Moves Back into the Limelight

Six and a half years after the ouster of the Taliban, U.S. media attention is returning to Afghanistan where more U.S. and NATO troops were killed in June than in any previous month.

RIGHTS-US: Anti-Torture Campaign Wins Influential Backers

On the eve of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, a bipartisan group of some 200 religious leaders and former top U.S. national security and military officers launched a campaign for a presidential order to outlaw torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of all detainees.

AFGHANISTAN: Karzai’s Threat Of War Triggers Outrage in Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s threat to send troops across the border to crush pro-Taliban forces, which sparked angry protests in Pakistan’s border areas this week, has led to calls for restraint from moderate politicians in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

US/PAKISTAN: Soldiers’ Killings Likely to Raise Tensions

The killings Tuesday night by U.S. warplanes of 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers at or near a checkpoint along the Afghan border is virtually certain to add to growing tensions between Washington and Islamabad at a critical moment in relations between both countries.

PAKISTAN: School Bombings Force Girls to Drop Out

"I am disappointed about quitting school, but my parents want me to stay at home," says Sumaira Begum, a student of class 8 at the Government High School Mardan in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). "On Mar. 20, my school was bombed after which nearly 100 girls including I stopped attending."

PAKISTAN: Abductions For Ransom Blamed on Taliban

A spate of kidnappings in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and areas adjoining Afghanistan are being blamed on Taliban militia.

POLITICS-CANADA: Few Mourn Fallen Foreign Minister

Canada's gaffe-prone foreign affairs minister, Maxime Bernier, resigned suddenly this week after revelations that he left sensitive and confidential government documents at the home of his ex-girlfriend, Julie Couillard.

CULTURE-PAKISTAN: Afghan Refugee Poets Behind Pashto Revival

Afghanistan’s tumultuous history of the last three decades is behind the incredible popularity of poetry in Pashto, the language of the majority Pakhtoons in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Violence Clouds Peace Prospects

Within a day of a controversial peace deal signed between the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Islamic fighters in Swat, a journalist was shot dead in neighbouring Bajaur Agency ruled directly by the Pakistan government last week.

PAKISTAN: Elected Gov&#39t Unable to Deal With Taliban Groups

Allah Hussain Mahsud has little hope in Pakistan's newly elected government's ability to negotiate with the ragtag Taliban militia and end militancy in the country's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

RIGHTS-US: Abuse Claims Mount Against Pentagon, Contractors

As human rights groups demanded the release of a report on a long-running investigation of the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the unlawful interrogations of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, new torture claims were leveled at two U.S. military contractors by a former Abu Ghraib "ghost" detainee who was wrongly imprisoned and later released without charge.

POLITICS-US: Pentagon Targeted Iran for Regime Change after 9/11

Three weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions.

AFGHANISTAN: Death Row Numbers Raise Grave Doubts

By lifting the shroud of secrecy over the number of Afghans on death row - some 100 - the government has ended up raising grave doubts about the trial procedures that led to the extreme sentences.

AFGHANISTAN: Bid to Slay Karzai Exposes Security Mess

Violence levels have increased in Afghanistan in the first quarter of 2008, compared to the first part of 2007, a series of newly-released studies indicate.

AFGHANISTAN: Global Emergency Triggers Food Riots

In the teeming, dense flour bazaars of Kabul, it's hard not to miss the anger.

PAKISTAN: Bulldozers Poised to Raze Afghan Refugee Camp

"We are shifting to a rented house in nearby Cherat village after being here for 20 years. We have to leave because my shop has been demolished," said an agitated Afghan refugee, Gul Wali, in the sprawling Jalozai refugee camp, 35 km east of this border city in Pakistan.

US/PAKISTAN: New Gov’t Needs Aid, Leeway to Address Terror Front

With the intelligence community and Congressional investigators warning that the greatest threat to the United States is developing in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, appeals for the George W. Bush administration to reassess its "global war on terror" and Pakistan's place in it are growing.

RIGHTS-US: Vets’ Lawsuit Opens Door on Suicides, Poor Care

The United States government does such a bad job of caring for wounded war veterans, advocates told a federal judge here Monday, that 18 veterans commit suicide every week.