Sharply increased attacks on U.S. and other NATO personnel by Afghan security forces, reflecting both infiltration of and Taliban influence on those forces, appear to have outflanked the U.S.-NATO command’s strategy for maintaining control of the insurgency.
Intervention in Syria was "only a matter of time", wrote Emile Nakhleh in February in the Financial Times. Seven months later, the fighting and divisions within Syria continue to worsen. Now, a diplomatic solution is no longer possible, Nakhleh, a retired CIA analyst, believes.
“I’m happy that I will be resuming work soon,” says Zarbistan Khan, who owns and drives a tanker that takes oil from the southern port city Karachi to Afghanistan. But the joy comes under the shadow of a Taliban threat to attack supply convoys.
Afghanistan’s international donors will gather on Sunday in Tokyo for a conference at which they are expected to pledge economic aid, and ensure their assistance level will be maintained after withdrawal of ISAF-NATO troops, in 2014. But Afghan people and civil society groups working in the country say much of the aid is being directed the wrong way.
As NATO supply convoys began crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan for the first time in more than seven months Thursday, analysts here warned that the reopening of the key route does not necessarily signal a new dawn in the fraught relations between Washington and Islamabad.
Six weeks of talks between Pakistan and the United States have been halted, a Defence Department official stated here on Monday.
It was recently reported that U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) commander Adm. Bill McRaven and Deputy Director of Operations Brig. Gen. Sean Mulholland want to establish a worldwide network linking special operations forces (SOF) of allied and partner nations to combat terrorism.
The United States and Kazakhstan are exploring the idea of expanding the amount of military cargo passing through Kazakhstan into and out of Afghanistan. The focal point of the discussions is the Caspian port city of Aktau.
It's not an easy time for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Growing numbers of activists are beginning to counter U.S. Drone attacks into Pakistani territory. The activists are confronting the U.S., but increasingly now the Pakistani government for allowing such attacks to continue.
While top officials in the Barack Obama administration insist that U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is working, the violent aftermath of last week's apparently inadvertent burning of copies of the Quran at a military base is fuelling growing pessimism about the U.S. and NATO mission there.