Afghanistan

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Afghan Wives' Horrific Way Out: Cooking Fuel, a Match

A look at the women who choose fire as a way to escape ... but survive

(Newser) - In Afghanistan, the most desperate women turn to items that even the poorest have access to as a way of escape: matches and cooking fuel. The New York Times takes a heart-wrenching look at the women who burn themselves in failed suicide attempts driven by forced marriages, abuse, and crippling...

Taliban Writes Letter to Congress

'Your military leaders are lying,' states missive

(Newser) - In a brazen bid to squeeze the US out of Afghanistan, the Taliban has written its first "open letter" to Congress detailing why America "can't win" the war. Letter author and Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousaf Ahmadi called on Congress to send a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan. The...

Entire Afghan Police Station Defects to Taliban

19 cops cut a deal with insurgents, sack, burn station

(Newser) - An entire Afghan police station defected to the Taliban today, with as many as 19 officers joining insurgent fighters in sacking and burning their own station, the New York Times reports. The lone remaining cop of the station southwest of Kabul—the chief—said that the turncoats took their guns,...

Gitmo's Former 'Child Soldier' Gets 8 Years

Plea bargain bars teen al-Qaeda fighter from 40-year sentence

(Newser) - The long-running case of a onetime teenage al-Qaeda fighter is over, with a US military judge sentencing Omar Khadr to eight more years in custody for war crimes. The sentence was handed down yesterday under a plea bargain in which the young Canadian, now 24, admitted to five war crimes...

Canadian at Gitmo Pleads Guilty to All Charges

Omar Khadr works out military plea deal

(Newser) - A Canadian prisoner at Guantanamo accused of killing an American soldier has pleaded guilty to all charges. Omar Khadr—who had been facing a possible life sentence—pleaded to five charges including murder in a plea agreement with military authorities. The terms of the plea deal have not yet been...

Karzai: Iran, US Give Me Bags of Money

Afghan president confirms NYT report; says several countries donate

(Newser) - Afghanistan’s president confirmed a New York Times report that his office gets bags of cash from Iran, saying the US has long known about it—and that the US also provides “bags of money," the AP reports. The Iranian money comes in batches of some $700,000...

Iran Slips Karzai Scads of Cash
 Iran Slips Karzai Scads of Cash 
Oct 24, 2010 7:06 AM CDT

Iran Slips Karzai Scads of Cash

Tehran's influence in Afghanistan is growing

(Newser) - Afghanistan, never a bastion for the honest or politically uncorrupted, is taking hefty bribes from a new source: Iran. As the New York Times reports, Tehran secretly and continuously slides a key aide to Hamid Karzai literal bags of cash that amount to a multi-million-dollar "presidential slush fund" aimed...

Karzai Ban May Squash US-Led Rebuilding Effort

US official: 'We might as well go home'

(Newser) - US-backed reconstruction projects—worth upward of $1.5 billion—are grinding to a halt, as firms begin to shutter them over the Afghan government's refusal to lift its ban on the use of private security contractors, reports the Washington Post . An official called the development "catastrophic" to America's effort...

Afghan Peace Talks Not Actually Happening: Officials

Experts say reports likely part of 'information strategy'

(Newser) - Don’t believe the reports of high-level peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government: No such discussions are taking place, say US officials and Afghan experts. Such reports, the experts noted, could be intended to divide Taliban bosses, McClatchy reports. “This is a psychological operation, plain and...

Contractors Threaten Progress in Afghanistan

Mercenaries drain local military, fight for Taliban

(Newser) - Though military experts have been cautioning against the expanding use of private military contractors since at least the days of Blackwater's string of shoot-outs in Iraq, a consensus is growing that the Pentagon's reliance on contractors in Afghanistan is actually impeding the war's progress, reports the Christian Science Monitor . For...

Taliban Retreats in Kandahar: NATO

Coalition thinks they've made big progress

(Newser) - NATO and Afghan forces have been wiping the floor with the Taliban in Kandahar in recent weeks, using new high-precision mobile rockets to rout insurgents from their long-held strongholds, NATO commanders, Afghan officials and local residents tell the New York Times . Western officials believe the Taliban has been dealt a...

Yet Another Blackwater Case Collapses

Issues with evidence, immunity make prosecution tough

(Newser) - Legal cases against Blackwater employees accused of committing murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan have been collapsing one by one, the New York Times reports. This week, the Justice Department dropped a case against an armorer accused of killing a guard to an Iraqi official; the move...

NATO Escorts Taliban Elite to Afghan Peace Talks

Talks have included commanders at the highest level of insurgency

(Newser) - NATO troops have been helping top Taliban commanders get to Kabul for face-to-face peace talks with Hamid Karzai, sources tell the New York Times. In at least one case, Taliban leaders actually hopped aboard a NATO aircraft to make the journey, and in others NATO has secured roads, promising leaders...

US: Iran Welcome at Afghan Talks

Tehran, who 'has a role to play,' sends representative to meeting

(Newser) - Iran sent a representative to an international pow-wow on the Afghan war today, and the US says it didn’t mind one bit. “We were asked whether we had any problems with that and we said 'No,’” Richard Holbrooke tells Reuters . “We recognize that Iran, with...

Bin Laden in House, Not Cave: Official

Al-Qaeda bosses living comfortably in Pakistan, says NATO insider

(Newser) - “Nobody in al-Qaeda is living in a cave”—instead, Osama bin Laden and other top figures are likely to be living rather comfortably in houses in Pakistan, under the protection of locals and some Pakistani intelligence, a NATO official tells CNN . Bin Laden has likely been roaming from...

Petraeus: 300 Taliban Leaders Hit in 3 Months

Special forces operations increase threefold

(Newser) - Special Forces teams have killed or captured more than 300 Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in the last three months, says David Petraeus. The top general revealed the figure in a wide-ranging and upbeat discussion of the Afghan war, noting that the results had come from a three-to-four-fold increase in the...

US Backs Taliban Talks
 US Backs Taliban Talks 
Oct 15, 2010 1:00 AM CDT

US Backs Taliban Talks

Clinton: 'Stranger things have happened'

(Newser) - Western nations seem to be quickly warming to the idea of talking peace with the Taliban. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who only last month said talks would be premature, backed the idea at a NATO meeting yesterday, the AP reports. "Whenever opportunities arise that are worth exploring, I think...

Send Books, Not Guns to Afghanistan
Send Books, Not Guns
to Afghanistan
Nicholas Kristof
Oct 14, 2010 10:11 AM CDT

Send Books, Not Guns to Afghanistan

Oman proves the value of education

(Newser) - Forty years ago, Oman was a hidebound society, similar to neighboring Yemen. There was no modern technology, no paved roads, and most of the people were illiterate. It had just three schools, all boys-only affairs. But today, Yemen is a haven for terrorists, but Oman isn’t. Why? Because in...

Taliban Ready for Peace Talks: Afghan Peace Council Chief

Former president says 'first steps' being taken

(Newser) - A former Afghan president who heads a new peace council said today that he's convinced the Taliban are ready to negotiate peace. Burhanuddin Rabbani told reporters in Kabul that the Taliban have not completely rejected the idea of negotiating a nonmilitary resolution of the war. "They have some conditions...

US Grenade May Have Killed British Aid Worker

Linda Norgrove died in flubbed rescue effort

(Newser) - Though initial reports stated that Linda Norgrove's Taliban captors detonated a bomb that killed her, the kidnapped British aid worker may have actually been killed by a grenade thrown by American forces during the flubbed rescue attempt in Afghanistan. British PM David Cameron made the announcement today, but defended the...

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