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.

FINANCE: U.S. Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars

U.S. lawmakers have a financial interest in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a review of their accounts has revealed.

AFGHANISTAN: More, But of What

At the Bucharest summit, NATO adopted an undisclosed "comprehensive" security strategy in Afghanistan, which combines military with civilian efforts. The publicised discussions on Afghanistan, however, were focused on the numbers of troops.

POLITICS-US: Campaigns Spar Over Where to Focus Troops

Last week's violent clashes in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra reverberated all the way to Washington, where suddenly, the Iraq war was thrust back into the limelight just as the 2008 primary season enters its final stretch.

NORWAY: Afghanistan Gets a &#39Super Envoy&#39

The U.N. has given Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide an ambitious new mandate to coordinate the international community's much criticised military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan. "For me it will be important to work in a closer dialogue with the Afghan leadership," the 'super envoy' told IPS.

AUSTRALIA: Bone to Pick With NATO On Afghan Deployments

As the largest non-NATO contributor to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, Australia is expected to make its own demands at this week’s crucial summit of the arms pact in Bucharest.

PAKISTAN/US: Elected Gov’t Wants War On Terror Reviewed

With a democratically-elected government firmly in place, the United States is anxious to see that its ‘war-on-terror’, which depended heavily on cooperation from the erstwhile military regime run by President Pervez Musharraf, does not get derailed.

AFGHANISTAN: Disappointed With Karzai, NATO

The Shahr-e-now park in the centre of Kabul has seen better days. "It used to be really beautiful," Kabul resident Torialay says, "back during the early-90s. But after the Mujahiddin war (a civil war between warlords and commanders in the mid-90s that destroyed much of the city) it has never been restored."

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Refugees Fear Return to Afghanistan

The countdown has begun for Afghan refugees to vacate the Jalozai camp, 35 km east of this border city in Pakistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Terrified Civilians Flee NATO Bombings

Jumakhan Said Muhammad was working on his land when he first heard the planes. "I looked up," the farmer from Musa Qala, in the southern Helmand province, says. "Suddenly a plane flew by and I saw smoke rising from my house, which was down the road."

CANADA: Pro-U.S. Panel Was Key in Extending Afghan Mission

Buoyed by the recommendations of a government-appointed blue-ribbon panel, Canada's parliament last week approved a motion to extend its combat mission in Afghanistan until the end of 2011.