Afghanistan

Source : Al Jazeera and Agencies | 17 Apr 2012

Suicide bombers have struck across Afghanistan in co-ordinated attacks, with explosions and gunfire rocking the diplomatic area of Kabul as Taliban fighters took over buildings and tried to enter parliament.

A joint operation by Afghan and international forces to displace the attackers from the buildings they had occupied continued into Monday morning, with Kabul residents reporting that the sound of machine guns and heavy weapons could be heard through the night.

By Reuters | Kabul | 12 Apr 2012

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday he is considering calling presidential elections a year early in 2013 to avoid overlapping with the drawdown of US-led NATO forces due to be completed by the end of 2014.

But it was unclear how serious the proposal was since Karzai, whose second five-year term ends in May 2014, does not have the constitutional authority to call elections early.

By AP | Kabul | 08 Apr 2012

The Afghan government and the US signed a deal Sunday governing night raids by American troops, resolving an issue that had threatened to derail a larger pact governing a US presence in the country for decades to come.

Night raids involve US and Afghan troops descending without warning on homes or residential compounds searching for insurgents. They are widely resented in this deeply conservative country.

Source : Al Jazeera | 30 Mar 2012

By Elisabeth Bumiller and Allison Kopicki | New York Times | Washington | 27 Mar 2012

After a series of violent episodes and setbacks, support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped sharply among both Republicans and Democrats, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old.

By Reuters | Kabul 23 Mar 2012

A US Army sergeant was formally charged with 17 counts of murder on Friday for killing eight adults and nine children in a pre-dawn shooting rampage in southern Afghanistan that further eroded US-Afghan relations already frayed by a decade of war.

By Jack Kimball | Reuters | Kabul 15 Mar 2012

In Afghanistan, if NATO forces kill a member of your family, it is better in terms of money if they come from Germany or Italy than the United States or Britain.

In the cold calculation of how much to pay for victims of the decade-old war, British forces have doled out as little as $210, while German forces have paid as much as $25,000, according to a study by the human rights NGO CIVIC.

Source : AFP | Seattle | 18 Mar 2012

The US soldier accused of killing 16 Afghans during a shooting rampage was described by those who knew him as "level-headed" and may have snapped under stress, his lawyers said.

The suspect, identified as 38-year-old US Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, had served three combat tours in Iraq -- where he was wounded twice -- and was on his first deployment to Afghanistan at the time of the killings.

By Hamid Shalizi & Jack Kimball | Reuters | Kabul | 16 Mar 2012

A NATO helicopter crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, Turkey’s military and a senior Afghan police official said.

The crash came amid growing unease among NATO partner countries about the increasingly unpopular and costly war nearly 11 years into the conflict as most foreign combat troops set to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Source : Agencies | Kabul | 15 Mar 2012<,/cite>

From the Wall Street Journal.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked the U.S. to withdraw its troops from Afghan villages and to confine them to bases following a shooting rampage by a U.S. staff sergeant on Sunday, the presidential palace said, in a move that dramatically changes the outlook for the war.