RIGHTS-US: Guilty Plea Won’t Dampen Gitmo Controversy

As Australian David Hicks awaits sentencing after being the first Guantanamo detainee convicted under the Military Commissions Act, human rights groups, legal scholars and some lawmakers are condemning the entire MCA process and again challenging its constitutionality both in the courts and in the U.S. Congress.

CANADA: Development Aid as Counterinsurgency Tool

A soon to be completed Canadian Forces counter-insurgency field manual foreshadows the type of interventions that the military in this country is preparing for the coming decades, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: Shifting Stakes, Partners

The crisis precipitated by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's summary sacking of Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry shows no sign of abating. The resignations of a number of judges and of deputy attorney general Nasir Saeed Sheikh seem to have strengthened the agitation launched by Pakistani lawyers. Various political parties are preparing to jump into the fray.

AFGHANISTAN: Amnesty Law Condones Warlords’ Past Abuse

A new law granting amnesty and legal protection from prosecution to Afghan commanders accused of committing war atrocities has shifted the burden of proof for the two and a half decades of grave abuses to the Afghan public.

CANADA: Counterinsurgency Manual Shows Military’s New Face

Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada's Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counter-insurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

AFGHANISTAN: ‘Double Standards’ Boost Taliban

Military forces from Western powers are fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but it is the policies of these very governments that is boosting the Taliban, going by several indications over recent days.

AFGHANISTAN: Italian Scribe Swapped for Five Taliban Prisoners

Freed Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo returned to Kabul Tuesday after being in Taliban custody for 15 days on charges of "spying" for the British.

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Give Italy Three Days for Italian Reporter

The Taliban may have sent their clearest signal about the fate of abducted Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo by executing his driver, preceded by a taped warning that the Italian government has "only two days to save his life by starting negotiations."

AFGHANISTAN: Italy Talks With Taliban Over Abducted Journalist

A day after an Italian journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan appeared in a video, shown over television, appealing to Prime Minister Romano Prodi to work for his release, both the Italian Embassy in Kabul and the Taliban have confirmed they are in negotiations.

PAKISTAN: Taliban Writ Runs in Border Areas

"Shaving beard isn't done here. Contact only for hair cut", reads a sign pasted outside the entrance of a barber's shop in Upper Dir, a rugged and mountainous district in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) that borders Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Kidnapping Motivated by ‘Press Freedom’?

The Taliban, the Islamist movement that dominated Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 and now is an outlawed rebel force, showed a new political facet when it kidnapped an Italian journalist this week.

AFGHANISTAN: On the Road to Becoming a Narco State

Although fully backed by U.S. military might and support from other Western powers, the government in Kabul has failed to change Afghanistan's status as the world's leading illicit producer of opium, according to U.N. experts who monitor the worldwide trade in narcotic drugs.

IRAN: Blaming the West for Sunni Unrest

As a Shia majority country with several large ethnic groups like the Kurds, Arabs and Baluchis that follow the Sunni faith, Iran has for years been vulnerable to unrest, riots and terrorist attacks that officials routinely attribute to foreign powers.

CANADA: Peace Scholars See Shrinking Space for Dissent

Can Canadians have a fair debate on their military mission in southern Afghanistan when so many of the sources quoted in the domestic press are bankrolled by the Department of National Defence (DND)?

AFGHANISTAN: ‘Mines Help Pakistani Claims on Disputed Border’

Afghanistan's long and rugged frontier with Pakistan is being mined and fenced by Islamabad in response to mounting criticism from Kabul and its Western allies that Islamabad is not doing enough to stop the resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda from crossing the porous border.

AFGHANISTAN: More Funds for Development, Less for Security

In the lead up to an anticipated Taliban spring offensive against the Afghanistan government, international assistance to the war-torn country has increased.

HEALTH-PAKISTAN: Porous Afghan Border Thwarts Anti-Polio Drive

Pakistan has intensified efforts to eradicate the polio virus with a new vaccination drive that targets 12 high-risk districts in southern Sindh province where three new cases were reported recently, bringing the total number of polio incidents countrywide to four since the start of the year.

MIDDLE EAST: Shia-Sunni Violence Spreads in Iran

A week after alleged Sunni militants blew up a vehicle transporting members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), killing 11 and injuring 18, sectarian tension is reported prevailing in the predominantly Sunni southeast that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.

POLITICS-US: National Security Experts Grim on Terror War

A new survey of more than 100 U.S. foreign policy experts - both Republicans and Democrats, as well as retired military and intelligence professionals - has found deep pessimism over the "global war on terror" and even deeper pessimism over the war in Iraq.

U.S.: Proposed ’08 Pentagon Earns Superlatives All Around

How big is President George W. Bush's proposed 2008 Pentagon budget?

POLITICS-US: One CEO’s Dissent from War on Terror

Meet Richard Wade Vague. Tall, friendly, dressed in a dark, finely tailored suit, with a firm, confident handshake and a ready, if surprisingly modest, smile, he looks like the quintessential successful 51-year-old self-described "conservative" corporate executive that he is.