AFGHANISTAN: End in Sight to South Korean Hostage Crisis

A visiting delegation of South Korean Muslims was Tuesday celebrating the sudden breakthrough in talks in Afghanistan, between the Taliban and South Korean officials, on the release of 19 South Koreans taken hostage in July.

MEDIA-AFGHANISTAN: Reporters Put Life on Line

The media in conflict-scarred Afghanistan is under increasing attack from Taliban forces and powerful social interests.

HEALTH-US: Defence Contract Workers Fall Through Insurance Cracks

New statistics from the United States Department of Labour offer greater insight into the number of defence contractors killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but questions remain about compensation for injured or dead contract workers and their families.

AFGHANISTAN: Women Defy Tradition, Run Shops in Mazar Town

Women have stormed a male bastion in this historic city, capital of the northern province of Balkh, and traditionalists are clicking their tongues in disapproval.

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN: Kabul Peace Jirga Falls Short

In a sharp departure from Pakistan's repeated denials of providing sanctuary to the Taliban, President Pervez Musharraf for the first time acknowledged in his speech to the Kabul peace jirga that there is support for the Taliban in the tribal areas of his country.

AFGHANISTAN: Reconstruction Can Help Win War Against Taliban

On Jul. 26, coalition aircraft pounded Taliban targets in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, killing 78 civilians and reducing to rubble, countless mud-walled homes.

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Gitmo Inmate’s Trial a Charade – Law Council

The Law Council of Australia’s third and final report on the trial of former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks slams the Australian Government’s acquiescence in the process and faults the overall trial.

TRADE-PAKISTAN: Smugglers Profit From Landlocked Afghanistan

Taking advantage of the United Nations-facilitated Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA), a massive contraband trade has grown around goods imported into Afghanistan and smuggled back into the markets of this frontier town in Pakistan.

SOUTH KOREA: Public Frustration Over Afghanistan Hostage Crisis

South Koreans are shocked, confused and furious over the uncertain fate of 21 compatriots held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan, as the government presses the United States and Pakistan to support its efforts to bring them back alive.

Q&A: &#39Targeting Fundamentalism Does Not Help Muslim Women&#39

Rising fundamentalisms around the world are challenging human rights, and particularly women's rights, feminist groups say. But this is not an Islam-related problem only, and isolating Muslim fundamentalism does not help Muslim women.

POLITICS-US: Obama Would Focus Terror Fight on Afghanistan

Sen. Barack Obama, a leading candidate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Tuesday he would make Afghanistan the focus of U.S. anti-terror efforts and unilaterally strike terrorist targets across the border in Pakistan if the government of President Pervez Musharraf failed to do so.

EDUCATION-PAKISTAN: Taliban Orders Girls Into Veils in Border Areas

Threatening letters sent by pro-Taliban rebels in a border area of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan warning girls to wear a veil or keep away from school have had the desired results.

AFGHANISTAN: Pressure on Pakistan to Flush Out Resurgent Taliban

Internal security and the U.S.-led war on terror are high up on the agenda of a meeting next month between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, at Camp David.

HEALTH-US: Vets Sue Gov’t for “Shameful Failures”

Two veterans' groups sued the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in federal court in San Francisco Monday for alleged "shameful failures" to help tens of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

DISARMAMENT: Will U.S. Finally End Cluster Bomb Exports?

At the end of June, a few members of the U.S. Congress made a discreet move to limit this country's exports of cluster bombs, a weapon that has been used around the world since the Second World War to devastating humanitarian consequences.

PAKISTAN: Suicide Bombings Demoralise Security Forces

A week-long campaign of suicide bombings that killed more than 130 people across Paksitan, has seriously demoralised security personnel in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, that have become a safe haven for the Taliban and the al-Qaeda.

FINANCE: U.S. Brokers Afghan Debt Cancellation

The United States, Germany and Russia have agreed to write off one billion dollars in bilateral debts owed by Afghanistan, or 92 percent of the poor nation's debt to the three nations.

POLITICS: Pakistani al Qaeda a Real Threat – US Intelligence

The United States intelligence community’s latest assessment of al Qaeda and the threat it poses to the homeland appears to have both renewed questions about the wisdom of invading Iraq and returned the spotlight to an increasingly strife-ridden Pakistan.

PAKISTAN: After Red Mosque Raid Gov&#39t Confronts Taliban

Pro-Taliban rebels operating close to the Afghan border have, through a series of suicide bomber attacks on security forces over the weekend causing some 80 deaths, signalled the end of a peace deal with the government and determination to avenge the Jul. 10-11 army raid on the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad.

PAKISTAN-US: Bush-Musharraf Alliance Under Growing Attack

Despite the media's and official Washington's focus on Iraq and Iran as the most urgent challenges to U.S. foreign policy, a growing chorus of voices is calling for a major shift towards what they regard as the "central front in the war on terror" - Pakistan.

GERMANY: Doubts Rise Over Afghan Engagement

Doubts are being raised about German military engagement in the so-called Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan ahead of a crucial vote in parliament due October.