Afghanistan

By Amie Ferris-Rotman | Reuters | 14 May 2012

Gulam recalls the evening she fled her home in northern Afghanistan on foot, running with her teen daughters under the cloak of darkness to avoid cooking a dinner for 20 Taleban insurgents.

"This Taleb burst through my door and demanded I cook for them. But I had no money, and I was scared they would take my daughters," Gulam said, pulling a stripy shawl tightly around her gaunt and wrinkled face.

By Reuters | Kabul | 14 May 2012

Insurgent attacks killed three NATO troops in Afghanistan on Saturday while a fourth died of non-battle related injuries, the international coalition said. A roadside bomb in the northwest killed four Afghan policemen.

All four members of the US-led military coalition died in southern Afghanistan, where much of the fighting in the more than 10-year conflict has been concentrated, the alliance said in a statement.

By Anne Gearan | AP | Washington | 10 May 2012

Support for the war in Afghanistan has hit a new low and is on par with support for the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, a bad sign for President Barack Obama as he argues that to end the war responsibly the United States must remain in Afghanistan another two years.

Only 27% of Americans say they back the war effort, and 66% oppose the war, according to an AP-GfK poll released Wednesday.

By Reuters | Kabul | 02 May 2012

A car bomb exploded outside a compound housing Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday hours after US President Barack Obama signed a security pact during a short visit to a city that remains vulnerable to a resilient insurgency.

Taleban insurgents claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on the eastern outskirts of the capital that killed at least six people, a Gurkha guard and five passers-by, and wounded 17. A young girl was among those killed.

Source : Al Jazeera | Kabul | 02 May 2012

US President Barack Obama has declared that the US combat role in Afghanistan is winding down just as it has already ended in Iraq.

"We can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he said at the end of a secretive trip to the war zone on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.

"Our goal is to destroy al-Qaeda, and we are on a path to do exactly that," Obama said in a speech on Tuesday to America broadcast from Bagram air base halfway around the world.

By AP | Kabul | 23 Apr 2012

The US and Afghanistan reached a deal Sunday on a long-delayed strategic partnership agreement that assures the Afghan people their key American ally will not abandon the country military or financially for years after 2014, the deadline for most foreign forces to withdraw.

By David Zucchino | Los Angeles Times | 18 Apr 2012

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse's severed legs.

By Anne Gearan | AP | Brussels | 18 Apr 2012

Several NATO allies promised Wednesday to underwrite Afghanistan’s armed forces after foreign troops depart, as the United States and other nations plan to pull away from the front lines in Afghanistan next year.

US officials were at pains to show that the pressure to close down an unpopular war will not leave Afghanistan’s fragile government and unsteady military in the lurch.

“There is no change whatsoever in the timeline,” NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted.

By AP | Kabul | 17 Apr 2012

Afghanistan’s president raised another condition Tuesday for a long-awaited strategic partnership with the United States: it must spell out the US’s yearly commitment to pay billions of dollars for the cash-strapped Afghan security forces.

The demand both threatens to further delay the key bilateral pact and suggests that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is worried that the US commitment to his country is wavering.

Source : Agencies | 17 Apr 2012

Australia said Tuesday it will bring its troops home from Afghanistan a year earlier than planned with most soldiers withdrawn in 2013.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard will take her pull-out timetable to a Nato summit in Chicago next month with her announcement coming a day ahead of Nato foreign and defence ministers meeting in Brussels to fine-tune their own troop withdrawals.

“I’m now confident that Chicago will recognise mid-2013 as a key milestone in the international strategy,” she said in a keynote speech.