RealClearWorld - Afghanistan

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Save What We Can in Afghanistan - Ahmed Rashid, The New Republic

It is undeniable that U.S. prospects in Afghanistan look bleak. Over 100 NATO soldiers were killed in June—more than during any month of the war to date. No European government a...

Obama's Detrimental Afghan Deadline - Trudy Rubin, China Post

U.S. President Barack Obama is caught on the horns of an Afghan deadline dilemma. In December at West Point, the president pledged that “after 18 months, our troops will beg...

Leaks Exhibit Limits of Nation Building - The National

In some of the worst crises of our time, timely intervention and military force have averted or brought an end to disaster. There is perhaps no better example than the three-month ...

War Logs Could Shatter Hopes of Success - Der Spiegel

The uncovering of almost 92,000 United States military war logs by WikiLeaks provides further evidence that the US and its allies are failing to make headway in Afghanistan, write ...

Afghanistan Is Not a Graveyard - Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy

It's the mother of all clichés. Almost no one can resist it. It's wielded by everyone from thoughtful ex-generals to vitriolic bloggers. It crops up everywhere from Russia's...

Leaks Show Why It's Time to Pull Out - George Friedman, Stratfor

On Sunday, The New York Times and two other newspapers published summaries and excerpts of tens of thousands of documents leaked to a website known as WikiLeaks. The documents comp...

Iran's Influence in Afghanistan - American Enterprise Institute

Operation Enduring Freedom--the war in Afghanistan--is now the longest war in American history. U.S. casualties are increasing, and public support for the war is in decline. But ...

Noble, Criminal Western Democracies - Rami Khouri, Daily Star

One of the paradoxes of leading Western democracies is how they can be at once so noble and so criminal....

Afghanistan Needs Local Politics, Not Militias - Foust & Meinshausen, WPR

The conflict in Afghanistan will end when Afghans step away from violence as a way of dealing with these problems....

From WikiLeaks to Killing Fields - Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal

Liberals contemplate withdrawal from Afghanistan, heedless of the consequences....

WikiLeaks Point to Iran-Al Qaeda Ties - Thomas Joscelyn, Weekly Standard

Intelligence reports pointing to collusion between the mullahs and al Qaeda are persistent....

Getting Lost in the Fog of WikiLeaks - Andrew Exum, New York Times

Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines....

Pakistan's Double Game - New York Times

Why would Pakistan play this dangerous game?...

What Do Leaks Really Reveal? - Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph

When, at the height of the Vietnam War in the 1970s, a disaffected Pentagon analyst published explosive details about how the White House was running the campaign, U...

Pakistan Has Its Own Battle to Fight - Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times

ISLAMABAD - Some of the 92,000 American classified military documents released by WikiLeaks at the weekend point to Pakistan's intelligence service backing ...

Somalia's Lessons for Afghanistan - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

Whenever western leaders ask themselves the question, why are we in Afghanistan, they come up with essentially the same reply – “To prevent Afghanistan becoming a faile...

Taliban Respond to WikiLeaks - Mushtaq Yusufzai, The Daily Beast

Responding to WikiLeaks' release of tens of thousands of pages of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, a high-ranking Taliban commander rejected reports tha...

Pakistan's Shameful Double-Dealing - Tunku Varadarajan, The Daily Beast

The latest gaudy gush from WikiLeaks will leave the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department soggy and irritable for many days. But one aspect of the leak—that concer...

Afghan War Leak Shows Unvarnished Picture - The Guardian

The fog of war is unusually dense in Afghanistan. When it lifts, as it does today with the Guardian's publication of selections from a leaked trove of secret US military logs, a v...

Why 2014 Became the Afghan Exit - David Van Praagh, Globe and Mail

The good news emerging from last week’s 70-nation conference in Kabul is that Pakistan will be prevented from starting to take over Afghanistan a year from now. The bad new...

WikiLeaks Should Be Afpak Game-Changer - Leslie Gelb, The Daily Beast

What do the secret documents released by WikiLeaks tell us about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan? It has to be said right off that they don’t tell us anything importa...

India Has Limited Afghan Options - M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times

The Greeks have a saying that the past is the vista that lies ahead while the future lurks furtively. The improbable symbolism sums up the Indian perspective ...

Why WikiLeaks Published War Logs - Julian Assange, Der Spiegel

In a SPIEGEL interview, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 39, discusses his decision to publish the Afghanistan war logs, the difficult balance between the public interest and the ...

Obama Blames Bush, But That Won't Do - Simon Tisdall, The Guardian

That the Afghan campaign lacks a clear strategy, has been politically misdirected and militarily under-resourced, and is essentially unwinnable as presently conceived is something ...

Afghanistan Must Declare Neutrality - The Hindu

The international conference missed a real opportunity to discuss a way forward in Afghanistan - through a paradigm shift....

Why Is COIN Hit or Miss in Afghanistan? - Rajiv Chandrasekaran, WaPo

Which community is the rule? And which is the exception?...

Is U.S. Plotting a Permanent Afghan Base? - M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times

Maybe there is an air about the brooding Hindu Kush mountains that lends inscrutability to politics and history. It touched Tuesday's Kabul international conference on Afghanistan,...

Obama's America and the World - Strobe Talbott, Yale Global

As Barack Obama approaches the halfway point in his first term as president, there is growing disappointment over his perceived failure to have lived up to the hopes inspired by hi...

U.S. Planning Soviet Style Exit from Afghanistan - Nikolas Gvosdev, WPR

The 2014 Afghan security plan unveiled by President Hamid Karzai this week at the international conference in Kabul raises once again the question of whether the U.S. and NATO are ...

Afghanistan, Not Karzai, Needs Aid - The National

Despite the show of unity at the Kabul conference this week, one unscripted exchange was revealing. The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon was answering a reporter’s question...

Partition Afghanistan to Save It - Robert Blackwill, Financial Times

In spite of the commitments made at Tuesday’s conference on the future of Afghanistan in Kabul, the current US counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) is likely to fail. The Taliba...

Afghanistan Shows Limits of U.S. Power - Seumas Milne, The Guardian

The catastrophic illusions and acts of official betrayal at the heart of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being progressively exposed, one after another. In London, the forme...

Afghans Need More Than a Few Years - Der Spiegel

The symbolism was significant. For the first time, world leaders gathered in Afghanistan to discuss the country's stability. Nevertheless, say German commentators, the aim of trans...

In Kosovo, Lessons in Nation-Building - Peter Baker, New York Times

Virtually forgotten is the last such American project overseas, still incomplete but reaching a critical juncture this week....

A Road Map for Afghanistan - Christian Science Monitor

If the White House describes July 2011 as the start of a NATO handover of security in Afghanistan to that country’s forces, think of July 2010 as serious preparation...

Not Time to Trust Afghans Just Yet - Ellen Knickmeyer, The Daily Beast

The latest American plan in Afghanistan—arming villagers against the Taliban—has in recent days created a fierce international debate, with some observers warning tha...

Obama's Soft Power Fallacy - Abe Greenwald, Commentary Magazine

In May, Barack Obama delivered the commencement address to West Point’s 2010 graduating class and offered high praise for the accomplishments of the American military&mdash...

Tackling the Challenges in Afghanistan - Hillary Clinton

Kabul, Afghanistan Thank you very much, Minister Rassoul. And I am honored to join representatives from more than 70 countries and organizations to stand in strong support of a pea...

Hamid Karzai's Newest Lie - Stephen Kinzer, The Daily Beast

The Afghan leader is treacherous, his government notoriously corrupt....

Why the West Has Turned on Afghanistan - Strategic Studies Institute

Domestic public opinion is frequently and correctly described as a crucial battlefront in the war in Afghanistan. Commentary by media and political figures currently notes not on...

Inside U.S. Drone Activities in Pakistan - Council on Foreign Relations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), often referred to as drones, have become increasingly important in U.S. efforts to strike militants in Pakistani regions bordering Afghanistan. I...

Afghanistan's Not-Nation-Building - Washington Post

Afghan-managed development can succeed....

Afghanistan's Road Map to Peace - The National

Afghanistan, Pakistan and India together hold the key to Afghanistan's future....

In Afghanistan, a Threat of Resource Plunder - Paul Collier, NY Times

Afghanistan must resist the kind of plunder that has characterized resource-rich countries with weak governance....

Two Wars and America's Hour of Truth - Ullrich Fichtner, Der Spiegel

Barack Obama is caught in a Catch-22 situation: If America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fail, they will overshadow any of his domestic achievements. The end game in the leadershi...

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