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The Afghan government believes that key leaders in the Pakistani army and intelligence service (the ISI) are still making deals, some of them secret, with the Taliban and Islamic radical groups, to make it easier for Afghanistan to be attacked, while providing Pakistan some immunity from terrorism. This kind of cynical arrangement is a staple of politics, especially in the Moslem world. Islamic radical groups will grant such immunity from attack in return for favors, then later resume attacks. So while the Afghan accusations may sound bizarre to Western ears, they make a lot of sense along the Afghan-Pakistan border....

To add some facts and historic timeline to the debate going on in the Obama Abandons Commitment to Iraq" thread.Scott responded to the oft repeated statement, taking "our eye off the ball", that is one of Obama's mainstays: However, Sen Obama’s “we took our eye off the ball” schtick is a lie. It’s a deliberate distortion of the truth; a deliberate misleading of Americans… Indeed it is an outright lie. And one that personally makes me break out in laughter everytime Obama parrots his regular speech talking point. We did not take our "eye off the ball". Rather we turned...

Sen. John McCain's campaign on Friday announced its first negative campaign ad of the general election that accuses Democratic opponent Sen. Barack Obama of failing to do his duty as chairman of a subcommittee charged with oversight over NATO, which leads war operations in Afghanistan. "Barack Obama never held a single Senate hearing on Afghanistan," the ad's announcer says, adding that Mr. Obama is now changing positions on the success of the military surge in Iraq "to help himself become president." Mr. Obama's campaign called the ad "patently misleading" and said it tarred Mr. McCain's calls for a campaign based...

KABUL -- U.S. troops have pulled out of a remote outpost in northeastern Afghanistan, the NATO-led security force has said, three days after Taliban militants tried to overrun the base and killed nine U.S. soldiers. NATO played down the significance of the withdrawal, but Taliban militants are sure to claim victory in driving foreign forces out of the wooded valley, close to the Pakistani border. Taliban militants briefly breached the incomplete defenses of the newly established base in the Wanat district of Konar Province on July 13 and hours of fierce fighting ensued that killed nine U.S. soldiers and many...

The latest trend in political punditry with respect to Afghanistan focuses on its "historically unconquerable" nature - highlighted by a long list of unsuccessful foreign efforts paraded in newspaper columns across the nation. The most compelling of these is the attempt to draw hard and fast conclusions from the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion that ended with its ignominious withdrawal a decade later. The first, and most egregious, error in this approach is to refer to everything the West is doing in Afghanistan as a foreign invasion, replete with the imposition of foreign ideas, control and values. The simple truth is...

British Forces in Afghanistan have killed their second senior Taliban leader in a little over two weeks, striking a critical blow to the insurgency's command and control capabilities in Helmand. Scimitar Combat Vehicles Bishmullah was a senior key facilitator and logistician responsible for the Northern Helmand region. He is believed to have commanded numerous fighters and was identified by Task Force Helmand as a key player in the insurgency, and criminality, before the strike. He was killed in a firefight in Now Zad in the early hours of Saturday, 12 July 2008, just 15 days after Sadiqullah, another senior Taliban...

CNN) -- NATO-led forces in eastern Afghanistan have left a temporary combat outpost station, a site insurgents tried to overrun earlier this week in a push that led to the deaths of nine American soldiers. But a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Wednesday that ISAF troops and Afghan National Security Forces would "continue to perform regular patrols near the village of Wanat." "The citizens in Wanat and northern Kunar province can be assured that ISAF and ANSF are going to continue with a strong presence in the area,'" said spokesman Capt. Mike Finney said. "We are committed,...

After deploying troops across the Kurram Agency along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has sent soldiers to the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), raising fears of a strike into the tribal areas in Pakistan's northwest. Quoting official and tribal sources in NWA, The News said Wednesday that NATO troops started arriving near the border areas Monday night. "Some of them had been brought in choppers and others by armoured personnel carriers. The troops had also shifted heavy arms and ammunition, including tanks, heavy machine guns and artillery to the border," Haji Yaqub, a resident of the border...

Hundreds of Nato troops took positions across North Waziristan Tuesday, creating panic among the already terrified tribesmen. Nato troops started arriving near the border Monday night. “Some of them had been brought in choppers and others by armoured personnel carriers. The troops had also shifted heavy arms and ammunition including tanks, heavy machineguns and artillery to the border,” said Haji Yaqub, of Ghulam Khan. The troops deployed near Ghulam Khan, Saidgai, Shawal and Mir Safar. “They started setting up bunkers very close to the border while gunship helicopters are continuously hovering over the border,” said Roohullah, of Saidgai. He said...

Pakistan Tribesmen Say NATO Forces Massing On Afghan Border MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP)--Tribal elders on Tuesday raised the alarm over a buildup of hundreds of NATO-led troops on the Afghanistan side of the border, but Pakistan's military downplayed fears of any intrusion. The gathering of foreign forces came as Pakistan was under pressure from the U.S. to curb cross-border attacks by Taliban militants, with the U.S. military chief flying into Pakistan last weekend for urgent talks. "We have heard there is a buildup of foreign troops," said Malik Mohammad Afzal Khan Darpakhel, a local tribal leader in North Waziristan who isn't...

- One thousand U.S. troops began a military training exercise in Georgia on Tuesday against a backdrop of growing friction between Georgia and neighboring Russia. Officials said the exercise, called "Immediate Response 2008," had been planned for months and was not linked to a stand-off between Moscow and Tbilisi over two Russian-backed separatists regions of Georgia. The United States is an ally of Georgia and has irritated Russia by backing Tbilisi's bid to join the NATO military alliance.

FATA militants commit to fight in Afghanistan * Taliban claims militants free to cross into Afghanistan if they do not stage attacks in Pakistan * Pakistan Army spokesman denies military helping militants in any form RAWALPINDI: In early June, about 300 fighters of various jihadi groups gathered in Rawalpindi for a secret gathering and agreed to resolve their differences and commit more fighters to Afghanistan. “The message was that the jihad in Kashmir is still continuing but it is not the most important right now. Afghanistan is the fighting ground, against the Americans there,” said Toor Gul, a leader of...

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 13 — Taliban insurgents mounted a large-scale attack on an American forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of Sunday, killing nine American soldiers in fierce fighting that continued through the day. Mark Laity, a spokesman for NATO, confirmed that nine soldiers had been killed and 15 more wounded, but did not give their nationality. Separately, a senior American military official confirmed that the nine soldiers killed were Americans. Four Afghan soldiers also were wounded, Mr. Laity said. The Taliban assault on the base was the deadliest single attack on the NATO security force...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Tuesday that Russian behaviour towards Georgia had exacerbated tensions and she urged both sides to avoid provocative actions.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday instructed police to prepare an operation to free four soldiers detained by separatists in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region.

LONDON (AFP) — Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Wednesday backed French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal that Europe should develop its own defence capabilities, saying it posed no threat to NATO. Miliband welcomed Sarkozy's pledge in a major speech last month that France, which was a founding member of NATO but left the integrated command in 1966 when president Charles de Gaulle rejected US dominance of the military alliance, will fully re-integrate the alliance. But he said developing European defence capacity was "not a threat to NATO". "NATO is and will remain the cornerstone of European defence," he said in a...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States and Poland have reached a tentative deal to place part of a ballistic missile defense system on its territory, a plan that has drawn sharp objections from Russia, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Poland's political establishment still has to sign off on the deal and determine the next steps, the official said. The agreement came after several days of negotiations and less than a week before a planned visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

WASHINGTON, July 2, 2008 – Defense Department officials are very concerned about the situation in Afghanistan, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here today. “Violence is up significantly from a year ago,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said during a Pentagon news conference. For the second month in a row, more coalition servicemembers died in Afghanistan than died in Iraq. Given the country’s harsh winters and unforgiving terrain, summer historically is the fighting season in Afghanistan, but the Taliban have become more organized and efficient, Mullen said. But part of the increase in violence is because there are...

With the demise of Communism, reasons for the West and Russia to be in confrontation vanished. Russia entered on the path of European democracy. In many areas, cooperation between Russia and NATO has yielded positive results. This is true in Russia's support for the transit of cargo by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. We are also gaining momentum in civil emergency planning, and our scientists are successfully collaborating on equipment to fight terrorism. Such successes, however, are largely overshadowed by contradictions in another issue - NATO enlargement and the admission of Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance. As...

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland and the United States may sign an agreement within the week on installing a U.S. anti-missile base in Poland, a senior Polish official said on Sunday. "The negotiations are winding down and everything points to an agreement being signed this week," PAP news agency reported Zbigniew Chlebowski as saying. Chlebowski, head of the ruling Civic Platform party's parliamentary caucus and mouthpiece for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, declined to give details. But speaking on a public-affairs radio show earlier on Sunday, Chlebowski criticized presidential aide and former foreign minister Anna Fotyga for paying an unannounced visit to...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A former Taliban fighter has provided a gripping first-hand account of being secretly trained by members of the Pakistani military, paid $500 a month and ordered to kill foreigners in Afghanistan. Mullah Mohammed Zaher offered a vivid description of a bomb-making apprenticeship at a Pakistani army compound where he says he learned to blow up NATO convoys. He's one of three former Taliban fighters introduced to The Canadian Press by an Afghan government agency that works at getting rebels to renounce the insurgency. Zaher insists he was neither forced to go public with his story nor coached...

NATO condemns any attempt to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict by use of force. “NATO supports the peace process in the OSCE Minsk Group framework,” Jean-François Bureau, NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, said during presentation of “NATO-Armenia. 10 years of progress” book in NATO information center in Yerevan. “The sides should understand that regional problems should be resolved via cooperation. NATO welcomes the initiatives intended for establishment of security and stability on the region,” he said.

Georgia has made an offer to Russia by which the two would divide Georgia's separatist Abkhazia region into zones of influence while Georgia would renounce its NATO goals, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday. The report in the Kommersant broadsheet cited unnamed officials in the Russian foreign ministry and in Georgia's leadership and came after Abkhaz separatist chief Sergei Bagapsh held talks in Moscow on Thursday. Georgia, the paper said, was making a complex set of proposals by which Georgia would extend its control further north into Abkhazia, as far as the Kodori River. Georgian refugees from fighting in the...

GARMISCH, Germany, June 26, 2008 – NATO’s long-term relevance will be tied directly to success in Afghanistan, and the slower NATO moves to ensure that success, the longer it will take to achieve, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here yesterday. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told about 200 students at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies he’s “desperate to get more capability” out of NATO. He said it’s critical that NATO lives up to its commitments to the alliance’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The biggest need, Mullen said, is for trainers for...

The words were clear: "Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial means." The speaker was France's Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet, addressing a pro-European rally in Lyon at the weekend. He was putting the blame for the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on some surprising shoulders: neoconservatives in the United States. "The role of the American neocons was very important in the victory of the 'no,'" he said. ... One of the most powerful groups campaigning against the treaty was Libertas... There has been much speculation about where exactly the Libertas funding...

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The security of US nuclear arms deployed in Europe is a matter for Washington and the host nation, not for NATO, an alliance official said Monday responding to a report outlining shortfalls. "There is a NATO policy framework for the presence of US nuclear weapons in Europe. But the security details and the handling of those weapons are a matter of bilateral arrangements," the official for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said. Hundreds of US nuclear weapons are held at air bases in six NATO countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, along with a total...

It was one of the most-amazing sights of the Cold War. By the hundreds, plane after plane thundered into the Berlin airports of Gatow, Tempelhof and Tegel, often arriving at the rate of one every three minutes. The supplies they delivered during the course of about a year sustained over 22,000 Western troops and over two million German civilians huddled in the ruins of the war-ravaged city. That the chief metropolis of a former, enemy nation could suddenly become a symbol of freedom revealed much about the strange, new era the world was entering. It also said much about the...

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S.-led coalition troops killed some 55 Taliban insurgents who ambushed them in southeastern Afghanistan, close to the Pakistan border, the U.S. military said on Monday. There has been a sharp rise in violence along Afghanistan's eastern frontier in recent months. NATO generals say de-facto ceasefires between Pakistan's new government and militants in its border region free up insurgents to infiltrate into Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents ambushed the coalition forces with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in the Zerok district of Paktika province on Friday, a U.S. military statement said. Among those killed were three Taliban leaders. "Around...

KABUL (Reuters) - Artillery shells fired from Pakistan landed in an Afghan army compound and close to an international military base in Afghanistan on Saturday and NATO forces returned fire, the alliance said. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, an improvised explosive device (IED) killed four U.S.-led coalition soldiers in the southern province of Kandahar, the scene of a large anti-Taliban offensive and an insurgent jail break. Tension has mounted between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the last week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened to send troops across the frontier to hunt down Taliban militants based in Pakistan's lawless border region.

MONARAI, Afghanistan (Reuters) - NATO and Afghan forces held mopping up operations, hunting Taliban fighters and burying the dead on Friday, after an air and ground offensive routed hundreds of insurgents from a valley near Kandahar city. The allies mounted the offensive on Wednesday after the Taliban took control of the Arghandab valley, 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Kandahar. Around 600 militants, including some who had escaped a week ago during a mass jail break from a prison in the city, had taken up positions in a cluster of villages, according to a provincial official and a Taliban spokesman....

European air force bases that store U.S. nuclear bombs are failing to meet basic security requirements to safeguard the weapons, according to a report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. keeps an estimated 350 thermonuclear bombs in six NATO countries. In four of those — Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — the weapons are stored at the host nation's air bases, where they are guarded by specially trained U.S. military personnel. But according to an internal U.S. Air Force report, the sites are falling short of Department of Defense requirements, with fencing and security systems in...

ARGHANDAB DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed or wounded after two days of fierce fighting over a strategic area just northwest of Kandahar City that insurgents had taken over at the start of the week. By Thursday, all that remained was the mopping up of small scattered pockets of resistance, jubilant political leaders and Afghan and Canadian military commanders told reporters from a mountainside perch overlooking the entire battlefield in a wide river valley. "This will give them a good lesson," Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said, referring to Taliban insurgents. Mr. Khalid said residents who had...

Four decades after President de Gaulle broke with the Nato command President Sarkozy announced France's return to the heart of the alliance — with conditions on EU defence that may unsettle Britain. Setting out a big shift in doctrine and spending yesterday, France's most pro-Atlanticist President said that nothing prevented a return to the integrated command from which de Gaulle withdrew in 1966 in dispute with the United States. “In Europe, nearly all our partners are members of the alliance. They do not understand why we persist in standing apart,” he said. The return to Nato would come as France...

Reports that suggest the Taliban have gained a footing in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province are “way overblown,” a Pentagon spokesman said today. Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters at a news conference that although an increased Taliban presence has been detected in the province, patrols conducted by Afghan National Police and coalition forces “found no evidence that militants control the area.” Press reports from the region said the Taliban had taken seven villages in the area and were poised for an attack on the city of Kandahar. “While in the area, coalition forces moved freely and met no resistance,” Morrell said....

WASHINGTON, June 17, 2008 – President Bush today praised the former commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, who plans to retire next month after a 40-year Army career. Earlier this month, Gen. Dan K. McNeill wrapped up a 16-month duty tour in Afghanistan, where he oversaw a multinational force of roughly 48,000 troops, including about 18,000 U.S. servicemembers. “I've gotten to know the general well. He's a tough, no-nonsense patriot who was our commander in Afghanistan,” Bush said after his meeting with McNeill in the Oval Office this morning. “I want to thank you very much for...

WASHINGTON — The Arabs who vanquished Al Qaeda in Iraq's Anbar province are counseling America to allow Afghans to form irregular militias and be mindful of their devout adherence to Islam, according to a memo from the Anbar Awakening to the American Embassy in Kabul. A rough English translation of the memo, which outlines an "awakening" strategy for Afghanistan and was originally prepared in Arabic at the request of the American deputy chief of mission there, Christopher Dell, was obtained by The New York Sun and confirmed as accurate by the military. The Afghanistan front has been a worry for...

Taliban fighters have claimed the lives of five British servicemen in the past 10 days in Helmand province. Now Sky News chief news correspondent Stuart Ramsay has had first hand evidence of the risks members of the Parachute Regiment are facing while on patrol with the Pathfinder unit. A "Jackal" fighting vehicle crunches its way through dried out poppy fields in Northern Helmand. The harvest is finished and the money from opium crops is being distributed - traditionally in June it heralds the start of intense fighting with the Taliban and this year is proving to be no different. The...

France to rejoin NATO command From correspondents in Paris June 17, 2008 08:36pm Article from: Agence France-Presse PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy today confirmed that France will soon rejoin NATO's military command that it left in 1966 but said its nuclear forces would remain under strict national control. "We can renew our relations with NATO without fearing for our independence and without the risk of being unwillingly dragged into a war," said Mr Sarkozy in an address on his new defence strategy.

The outgoing top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Friday that attacks increased 50 percent in April in the country's eastern region, where U.S. troops primarily operate, as a spreading Taliban insurgency across the border in Pakistan fueled a surge in violence. In a sober assessment, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who departed June 3 after 16 months commanding NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said that although record levels of foreign and Afghan troops have constrained repeated Taliban offensives, stabilizing Afghanistan will be impossible without a more robust military campaign against insurgent havens in Pakistan. The Taliban is "resurgent...

More British troops are to be sent to Afghanistan, the Government will announce next week. The Daily Telegraph has learned that reinforcements are being deployed as British forces face fierce resistance from the Taliban and doubts grow about the West's strategy in Afghanistan. Five men from the Parachute Regiment have been killed in Afghanistan this week, taking the British death toll in the country to 102. Britain has 7,800 troops in Afghanistan and Des Browne, the defence secretary, will tell MPs on Monday that at least 200 more are being deployed. Article continues advertisement The increase will take British numbers...

The U.S. Navy extended an open invitation this week to the Russian Federation Navy to join forces for missions on the world’s high seas. Both marine forces have increased their presence around the globe. The U.S. Navy asked the Russians to join the Navy’s new maritime initiative, a plan much different from the sea-combat strategies of yesteryear — those of fighting in deep blue water to sink other navies or deliver missiles inland from the oceans. Now, focus is placed on maintaining safe seas, delivering humanitarian aid, disaster response and countering terrorism. "The point that we brought out in discussions...

WASHINGTON, June 13, 2008 – The current number of forces in Afghanistan is enough to accomplish the mission, but it’ll take awhile to do so, the U.S. officer who just finished his tour as commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan said here today. “Let’s just say that somebody waved a magic wand, and by gosh, between the Afghans and the international force you’d produced a force that was well over 400,000,” Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill said to reporters at a Pentagon news conference. That larger force, McNeill said, likely would produce “instant quiet” across much of Afghanistan. Yet, “in...

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 13, 2008 – NATO has made significant progress in Afghanistan, and the alliance now needs to deliver on the goals the alliance’s heads of state set when they met in April, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. Gates spoke during a news conference at NATO headquarters following two days of meetings with NATO defense ministers. Alliance heads of state agreed at their Bucharest, Romania summit in April that more capabilities are needed at the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. They also promised to field all the troops the NATO operations plan calls for....

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 13, 2008 – It was going to be a typical NATO defense ministers working dinner until Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates threw away his script. Gates spoke from his heart last night during a dinner at which ministers discussed the NATO mission in Afghanistan. According to a U.S. official who was there and later spoke with reporters on background, Gates “was on fire.” The secretary had a 10-page speech prepared, but that went out the window as he began to speak. Gates started by saying he is particularly impassioned about Afghanistan “because in May, U.S. casualties in...

Iran, Iraq and other hot spots topped discussions between U.S. President George Bush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Thursday in Rome. "We did have a wideranging discussion," Bush said during a news conference. "I appreciate very much the fact that Italy is meeting international obligations." Bush noted that U.S. citizens probably didn't realize how many Italian troops were deployed around the world, including 8,700 troops in areas such as Kosovo and Chad. "We talked about Iraq, how Iraq is changing for the better, how people are beginning to realize the blessings of a free and peaceful society," Bush said,...

Appathurai said the training is expected to start soon, and diplomats added that the aim was to have an initial force of 1,200 ready by year's end. Diplomats said the 600 or so Spanish troops serving in Kosovo would not take part in the training. Although Appathurai stressed the planned multiethnic nature of the force, it was uncertain whether members of Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority would participate. Meanwhile, Russia signaled its continued annoyance over Kosovo by calling for the dismissal of the top U.N. official in the new nation over plans for the European Union to replace the current U.N....

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 12, 2008 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and fellow NATO defense ministers will discuss alliance operations in Afghanistan, the alliance missile defense program, and transition plans for Kosovo during a two-day ministerial beginning here today. The ministers will focus on how NATO nations are moving toward implementing decisions the member nations’ heads of state reached at the alliance’s April summit in Bucharest, Romania, a senior defense official speaking on background told reporters traveling with Gates. Afghanistan will dominate much of the conference, the official said. Gates will participate in meetings centered on NATO’s Regional Command South...

The Parachute Regiment has suffered its biggest loss in a week since the Falklands War after two soldiers were killed during an ambush in Afghanistan. The number of paratroopers killed in action in the last four days now stands at five dead after a suicide bomber killed three on Sunday. In an operation to flush out the Taliban and reassure the local population around the town of Sangin the Paras were ambushed by the insurgents from close range. A third soldier was seriously wounded. Although senior commanders have said the Taliban leadership had been "decapitated" and supply routes "disrupted" it...

OTTAWA -- Conservative and Liberal senators cast doubt Wednesday that Canada will be able to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by 2011 as planned. The Senate's national security and defence committee also urged the government to ease its stance against negotiating with the Taliban, warning that the war could drag on for years without diplomatic intervention, although Conservative members of the panel opposed that position. "I don't think all the troops will be out of there in 2011," said Conservative Senator Michael Meighen, vice-chair of the committee, referring to parts of Afghanistan as "medieval." "I don't think there's any chance...

KABUL, June 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Wednesday that an air and artillery raid which Pakistan said killed 11 of its soldiers on the Afghan border was aimed at Taliban militants and had been coordinated with Pakistan. "...Coalition forces informed the Pakistan Army that they were being engaged by anti-Afghan forces ...," the U.S. military said in a statement. It added that coalition forces were engaged by anti-Afghan forces during an operation "that had been previously coordinated with Pakistan". Pakistan earlier denounced the air strike as "unprovoked and cowardly", saying it killed 11 soldiers and undermined the...