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The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan says its compound was hit by indirect fire just before dawn on Christmas Day. It says no Americans were injured. […] The Taliban claimed they fired four rockets at the embassy on Wednesday and inflicted heavy casualties. But the insurgents often exaggerate their claims. …

If Mohammed Ibrahim Caravan smells fear about Afghanistan's future, he doesn't show it. He strolls around like a country squire in the glittering new gated community he helped build, dressed in a spotless white shalwar kameez tunic, stylish shades and polished wingtips. "Worried?" the 28-year-old asked. "Hah — not me. I'm confident in the future. If you don't invest in your own country, who will?" Caravan's company is plunging $160 million into the family-run Saleem Caravan City, with its rows of salmon-colored villas with balconies and rose gardens, like some ersatz Miami Beach condo community. He's moved his family into...

Phyllis Chesler is a psychologist and academic whose writings we have quoted from time to time over the years. Ms. Chesler has always had a rather skeptical attitude toward Islam, in particular with regard to its treatment of women. Now we know why: Chesler has published a new book titled An American Bride In Kabul. You can read an excerpt from An American Bride in the New York Post. Chesler’s horrifying story begins in 1959 when, as an 18-year-old college student, she meets and falls in love with an older, wealthy and cosmopolitan Afghan man. Two years later, they agree...

Fifty years ago this week, Duke Ellington and his band played in a concert he later called one of the most memorable of his life. The performance was in Kabul, in Afghanistan, and even though Ellington was at the height of his fame, almost all traces of it have been lost. For the organiser, Faiz Khairzada, and hundreds of Afghans in the audience, the concert was a high point of the early 1960s. "It was very exciting for me to have him in Kabul," says Khairzada, then head of Afghanistan's cultural affairs organisation. It was he who met Ellington at...

In wake of Benghazi attack, internal probe finds Afghanistan posts vulnerable. U.S. diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan have serious security lapses that pose “unnecessary risk to staff,” including poor emergency preparedness and inadequate protections that might allow classified materials to fall into the hands of attacking enemies, according to an internal report that raises fresh questions about the State Department’s commitment to safety in the aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy. The confidential State Department inspector general’s report, obtained by The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act, directly criticizes the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for failing to perform a...

SNIP A Reuters reporter at the palace said the attack began soon after 6.30 a.m. (0200 GMT) on the building's east gate. Reporters were gathering for a press event with President Hamid Karzai. SNIP

KABUL, Afghanistan Large explosions are being heard coming from the military side of Kabul international airport, which houses a NATO headquarters. The explosions began about 4:30 a.m. Monday from the direction of the military headquarters.

A suicide car bomb targeted a foreign military convoy in Kabul on Thursday, killing 15 people including five Americans in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital for nearly a year. The powerful explosion, which struck at 8:00am (local time) in the Shah Shaheed south-eastern residential district, also injured about 40 passers-by including many children going to school, officials said. Nine Afghans including two children died, along with two US soldiers and four NATO-contracted civilians who were travelling through the city's busy rush-hour traffic. A Western military source in Kabul said the two soldiers and three of the contractors were...

NEW YORK (AP) — A U.N. whistleblower who won his case but received only 2 percent of the $2.2 million he sought in damages and costs is asking the U.S. government to withhold 15 percent of its payments to the United Nations. James Wasserstrom alleged corruption involving senior officials in the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Kosovo in 2007. He is now an anti-corruption adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Wasserstrom told a news conference Monday that he was sending a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and key lawmakers asking that they implement a federal law requiring...

... new details about how a small group of men profited from fraudulent loans. It called out local authorities for succumbing to political pressure and the international community for not doing enough to stave off the catastrophe which led to a near-complete meltdown of Afghanistan’s banking system in 2010. The report, partly compiled from the results of a nine-month-long audit conducted by Kroll, a global investigations firm, said that the crisis was brought on by a well-hidden Ponzi scheme. More than 92% of the bank’s loan book, or $861 million, was extended to 19 related individuals and businesses, which ultimately...

Kabul Bank became Afghanistan’s largest financial institution by offering the promise of modern banking to people who had never had a saving or checking account. What it really dealt in was modern theft: “From its very beginning,” according to a confidential forensic audit of Kabul Bank, “the bank was a well-concealed Ponzi scheme.” Afghan and American officials had for years promoted Kabul Bank as a prime example of how Western-style banking was transforming a war-ravaged economy. But the audit, prepared this year for Afghanistan’s central bank by the Kroll investigative firm, gives new details of how the bank instead was...

From an International Security Assistance Force Joint Command News Release KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 15, 2012 – International Security Assistance Force officials are providing additional details about the Sept. 14 attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province in which two coalition service members were killed when insurgents attacked the base’s airfield. Because it is still early in the investigation of this attack, information is subject to change as new details become available, officials said. The attack commenced just after 10 p.m., officials said, when approximately 15 insurgents executed a well-coordinated attack against the airfield on Camp Bastion. The insurgents, organized...

"Hurry hurry hurry. We can destroy the enemy. Advance." "Hit hit hit the Taliban." "Hit him hit him hit him. Fire, fire." "We're arriving in Khalakhan." "Take care about the troops." "The Taliban are surrendering." "Bring them to me." "One hundred of them are coming to you." "El Ham captured a pickup with their weapons." These were the voices on the radio of the Northern Alliance commanders we have been visiting for weeks. Several other journalists and I were standing with some Afghan soldiers on the roof of a command post--a mud house with a tank's turret and gun jutting ...

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. State Department announced this week that it finally is going to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, it was a nonevent for most of our countrymen. That's because few Americans know how deadly the organization is. For that we can thank those at Foggy Bottom who are wedded to the naive hope of a near-term "diplomatic breakthrough" in Afghanistan. Couple that misguided belief with the Obama administration's self-deception that the radical Islamic jihad against the West ended with the demise of Osama bin Laden and it's understandable why the Haqqani network...

A Pakistani protester shout slogans at an anti-American rally to condemn the U.S. for accusing the country's most powerful intelligence agency of supporting extremist attacks against American targets in Afghanistan, in Multan, Pakistan, Friday, Sept 23, 2011. The top U.S. military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, accused the Haqqani network Thursday of staging an attack against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. He claimed the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, helped the group carry out the two attacks. KABUL, Afghanistan -- Pakistani military units fired shots at American and Afghan government troops along the Afghanistan border several times over the past...

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan: Though there's been a bit of damage to the C-17 regularly used by General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff -who was thankfully off sleeping in his quarters at the time of today's pre-dawn, two-rocket volley- was not hurt. No fatalities reported either, but two ground crew were injured and -of course- the Taliban are suspected, who else.Periodic shelling of Bagram -which is situated north of Kabul- has been known to occur, though it is rare for them to hit anything of value. But General Dempsey was in town for a pow-wow...

Explanation: What are these humans doing? Dancing. Many humans on Earth exhibit periods of happiness, and one method of displaying happiness is dancing. Happiness and dancing transcend political boundaries and occur in practically every human society. Above, Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, planned on dancing, and filmed the result. The above video, the latest in a series of similar videos, is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious -- few people are able to watch the above video without...

A video showing the public execution of a 22-year-old woman accused of adultery in Afghanistan has been condemned by the government as un-Islamic and inhuman. The video shows her being shot repeatedly in the back in front of a crowd of men in Qol village in Parwan province just north of the capital Kabul. The woman, named as Najiba, was married to a member of a Taliban militant group and was accused of adultery with a Taliban commander, said Roshna Khalid, a Parwan provincial spokeswoman, yesterday. "Within one hour they decided that she was guilty and sentenced her to death....

President Barack Obama left Afghanistan on Wednesday, targeting a foreigners' housing compound with a suicide car bomb and militants disguised as women in an assault that killed at least seven people. It was the second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks and highlighted the Taliban's continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when security had been tightened for Obama's visit and Wednesday's anniversary of the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. Obama arrived at Bagram Air Field late Tuesday, then traveled to Kabul by helicopter for a meeting with President...

KABUL, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber and Taliban militants disguised in burqas attacked a compound housing hundreds of foreigners in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, killing seven people, officials and witnesses said. The Taliban said the attack was a response to President Barack Obama's surprise visit just hours earlier. At least 17 people were also wounded in the assault, most of them Afghan children on their way to school, the Interior Ministry said. The second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks, the attack highlights the Taliban's continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even...