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.

IRAQ-AFGHANISTAN: Overlooking the Air War

On Jun. 18, seven children were killed during a U.S.-led air strike against a suspected al Qaeda sanctuary in eastern Afghanistan. Three days later, at least 25 civilians died during a similar "incident" in Helmand province in the south of the country.

CULTURE-AFGHANISTAN: Young Musicians Revive Classical Heritage

Bombs and rockets may have reduced Afghanistan’s cultural heart to rubble, but it has not completely destroyed a people’s centuries-old love of classical Hindustani music.

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Afghan Refugees Forcibly Herded Home – Activists

While heavy seasonal rains that damaged bridges on the road to Afghanistan have forced the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to suspend repatriation operations, Pakistan’s frontier police has announced intensification of efforts to send back 'illegal' Afghans.

POLITICS-US: Bush Shielding of Musharraf Policy at Risk

The growing crisis over Islamic extremism in Pakistan is drawing attention to the complicity of that country's military government in the rise of the biggest haven for Islamic terrorism in the world.

POLITICS: Opium Production Still Climbing, UN Says

While some encouraging advancements have been made to contain a global drug epidemic, opium production in Afghanistan's southern provinces continues to climb, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported Tuesday.

AFGHANISTAN: Soviet-Era Weapons Handy for Taliban

While United States officials accuse Iran of arming a resurgent Taliban, officials here say the weapons are actually part of vast caches left behind by the Soviet army that fought a nine-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in 1988.

AFGHANISTAN: Afghans Blast Karzai Over Coalition Killings

A day after an agitated President Hamid Karzai reprimanded foreign troops for unnecessary civilian deaths, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) shot dead one Afghan and wounded two others in retaliation for a roadside blast that damaged their vehicle.

U.S.-IRAN: New Arms Claim Reveals Cheney-Military Rift

In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran agenda of the George W. Bush administration and the preoccupation of its military command in Afghanistan with militant Sunni activism, a State Department official publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming the Taliban forces last week, but the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan rejected that charge for the second time in less than two weeks.

HEALTH-US: Surviving War, Slowly Dying at Home

The U.S. Vets Westside Residence Hall is a hulking eight-story structure a few blocks from Los Angeles International Airport. It's the largest transitional housing and employment centre for homeless veterans in the country, hosting 700 veterans annually.

POLITICS-US: Cheney&#39s Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed

A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.