My colleagues Pat Frost and Rob Grace ( over at the Law and Security Strategy blog) and I have written extensively on why the situation in Afghanistan looks grim. The war there is a long haul; the Karzai government is corrupt, a two-timing, untrustworthy thing; viable solutions to the conflict in Afghanistan require negotiated international […]
The story of US/Karzai government negotiations with members of the Taliban have already taken so many twists (mostly rhetorical rather than substantive) that one should not feel ashamed to be confused as to what exactly is going on between the two warring parties. One second the Obama administration admits (Gates) to ongoing negotiations and the […]
Well now. This isn’t good. The Karzai Administration is taking in more than $1 million a year off the books from Iran’s government to pay for presidential expenses. The Chief of Staff is taking in the cash, no doubt helping Mr. Karzai pay for his lavishly, handsomely decorated, pain-stakingly made shawls. Some of it goes […]
Max Boot , Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and most importantly a Petraeus advisor, had a chat with Charlie Rose. I invite you, my reader, to watch the whole interview here. There are a few takeaways that you might want to keep in mind as you watch Boot […]
The announcement that Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai are not interested in a coalition government after the Afghan Presidential run-off is, in fact, not bad news. There’s no reason why a power-sharing agreement would make Afghanistan’s political system more stable, as both Karzai and Abdullah are aligned with the United States. The problems are more […]
General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops is, of course, expected. Military commanders are always going to want more resources to utilize, regardless of whether they know how to use them or not (McChrystal’s insistence on a population-centric strategy in rural Afghanistan seems to make little sense). As reported in today’s New York Times, President […]
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