Strategies to Counter Opiate Production: Are We on the Right Track?
12 January 2011
[pdf], Groupe URD, June 2010
EXCERPT: "[...] During the past decade, there has been a succession of policies and programmes aiming to reduce drug production either through eradication, repression or via the implementation of alternative agricultural or rural development activities. What results have these produced? What lessons can be drawn from them? In order to answer...
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Counterinsurgency Strategy Not Working in Afghanistan: Critics
12 January 2011
Counterinsurgency Strategy Not Working in Afghanistan, Critics Say, AOL // Politics Daily, 12 January 2011
EXCERPT: "The counterinsurgency strategy the United States has relied on to win the Afghan war is producing disappointing progress at best and, at worst, is wasting billions of dollars and prolonging the nine-year war, according to a wide range of informed critics. Experts on Afghanistan and on counterinsurgency, among them active-duty...
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Courting US Investors Part of Pentagon's Broad Strategy in Afghanistan
12 January 2011
Afghanistan: Land of War and Opportunity, BusinessWeek, 6 January 2011
EXCERPT: "Paul A. Brinkley isn't the general public. As U.S. Deputy Under Secretary for Defense, he moves freely behind the barricades, ushering a handful of American visitors, including Silicon Valley executives Atul Vashistha and Mike Faith, the heads of Neo Group and Headsets.com, through dark corridors and up steep stairways to the highest reaches of the fortress....
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Germany Exudes Optimism in Extending Afghanistan Mission
12 January 2011
Berlin Exudes Optimism in Extending Afghanistan Mandate, Spiegel Online, 12 January 2011
EXCERPT: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet is confident that improvements are just around the corner in Afghanistan. The government in Berlin agreed on an extension of the mandate authorizing its presence in the war-torn country by one year on Wednesday -- and hope was in no short supply. The international mission in Afghanistan, the...
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Attacks on Intelligence Forces Kill Eight in NE
12 January 2011
Attacks on Intelligence Forces Kill Eight, BBC News, 12 January 2011
EXCERPT: "At least four people were killed when a suicide attacker rammed his motorcycle into a bus in the Afghan capital, Kabul, police have told the BBC. More than 30 others were injured in the powerful blast in the west of the city. Security sources said the bus was carrying members of the Afghan intelligence agency, the NDS. Meanwhile a remote-controlled roadside...
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Smuggling Ring Bringing Afghans to Europe Disrupted
12 January 2011
Smuggling Ring Bringing Afghans to Europe Disrupted, Reuters, 11 Januar 2011
EXCERPT: "A smuggling network channelling about 200 migrants a month, mainly from Afghanistan, into Europe has been disrupted in an Italian-led investigation, European police agency Europol said on Wednesday. A two-year cross-border investigation resulted in 26 arrests on Jan. 11, mainly in Italy but also in France and Germany. Groups in Greece, Norway, Sweden,...
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