Tajik Guards Killed in Fight with Drug Smugglers on Afghan Border
10 January 2011
Tajik Guards Killed in Fight on Afghan Border, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 3 January 2011
EXCERPT: "At least two Tajik servicemen have been killed in a gun battle with some 30 suspected drug smugglers who entered the country from Afghanistan last week, RFE/RL's Tajik Service reports. Tajik security officials told RFE/RL today the fighting took place on December 27 in Bogh, in Khatlon Province's Shuroobod district. The officials,...
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Afghan Envoy Denies Any Agreement to Hold Peace Council with Pakistan
10 January 2011
, AFP, 10 January 2011
EXCERPT: "The leader of an Afghan peace delegation to Pakistan denied Monday that the two countries had reached an agreement to hold a peace gathering, contradicting an earlier statement from Islamabad. A group from President Hamid Karzai's High Council for Peace (HCP), led by former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, held high-level talks in the Pakistani...
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The Way Out of Afghanistan
10 January 2011
[Op-Ed by Ahmed Rashid], The New York Review of Books, 13 January 2011
EXCERPT: "For the 100,000 American forces, 40,000 NATO troops, and their commander, General David Petraeus, it's Year One of the Surge in Afghanistan. For many Afghans it's Year Nine of the US Occupation?or, to be kind, Year Nine of the US-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. US officers say that the war is finally on the right footing,...
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Afghan Insurgents Match US Surge with More IEDs
10 January 2011
Afghan Insurgents Match Surge with More IEDs, USA Today, 10 January 2011
EXCERPT: "Insurgents in Afghanistan have answered the Obama administration's troop surge with a surge of their own, planting thousands of roadside bombs that caused more U.S. troop casualties last year than the prior eight years of the war. Since President Obama took office in January 2009 and vowed to end Taliban gains in Afghanistan, casualties from improvised...
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Locals Fear Working, Going to School as Taliban Intimidate "Cleared" Village
10 January 2011
Afghan Villagers Still Living in Fear of Taliban, The Vancouver Sun, 5 January 2011
EXCERPT: "[...] In a country thirsting for education and starving for jobs, the village of Salavat is being offered both in abundance ? but there are no takers here. 'If our children come to this school, the Taliban will come at night,' said the villager, one of five brave old men who answered an invitation to a shura, or meeting, at the school....
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Three Afghan Police Killed in NATO Air Strike
10 January 2011
Three Afghan Police Killed in Nato Air Strike, The Guardian, 10 January 2011
EXCERPT: "A Nato air raid in central Afghanistan may have killed three Afghan police officers and wounded three others, the third such incident in fewer than five weeks. Foreign troops on patrol in Daykundi province yesterday called in an air strike after seeing nine people setting up what appeared to be an ambush, the Nato-led International Security Assistance...
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