Karachi is part of Pakistani Taliban plan to bring war to urban centers
A spate of Pakistani Taliban bomb attacks on candidates campaigning for Pakistan’s May 11 general election in the coastal city of Karachi has signaled what people close to al Qaida say is a strategic shift by the country’s militant insurgency from areas bordering Afghanistan to major urban centers. | 04/29/13 17:03:29 By - By Tom Hussain
In test of Pakistani democracy, Pervez Musharraf appears in court
Pervez Musharraf, the 69-year-old former president of Pakistan, surrendered to authorities Friday and was arraigned before a local magistrate on a range of charges that could send him to prison for years. He was the first of the country’s four former military dictators to appear before a civilian court. | 04/19/13 15:35:26 By - By Tom Hussain
Once Pakistan’s strongman, Pervez Musharraf holed up at farm in test of country’s democracy
From October 1999 to February 2008, Pervez Musharraf held unequaled power in Pakistan as the country’s dictatorial president and a key ally in the United States’ war on terror. President George W. Bush was considered a close personal friend. | 04/18/13 15:01:57 By - By Tom Hussain
‘Grandmother of Afghanistan’ Nancy Hatch Dupree says it may be time to move on
Dupree came to Afghanistan in 1962 with her first husband, a U.S. diplomat. She’ll leave, if she can finally make herself do it, as a revered figure. During her decades here, she’s been ejected by the Russians, turned down a request for help from Osama bin Laden, guided countless relief efforts, aided refugees, advised journalists, politicians and the United Nations, and written five travel guides and hundreds of articles on topics including Afghan history, archaeology, women issues and libraries. | 04/18/13 14:55:30 By - By Jay Price
Kerry meets with parents of slain press officer Anne Smedinghoff on return from 10-day trip
Secretary of State John Kerry met Monday with the family of a 25-year-old Foreign Service officer who’d died in a suicide bombing in southern Afghanistan nine days earlier. | 04/15/13 19:41:06 By - By Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel
Witness: Anne Smedinghoff, other Americans killed in Afghan bombing were on foot, lost
A promising young U.S. Foreign Service officer, three American soldiers and a civilian government contractor who were killed Saturday in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan probably wouldn’t have been close to the blast if they hadn’t gotten lost while walking to the school where they were to participate in a book-donation ceremony, according to an Afghan television reporter who was with them and was wounded in the attack. | 04/10/13 16:51:53 By - By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq
U.S. secret: CIA collaborated with Pakistan spy agency in drone war
Even as its civilian leaders publicly decried U.S. drone attacks as breaches of sovereignty and international law, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency secretly worked for years with the CIA on strikes that killed Pakistani insurgent leaders and scores of suspected lower-level fighters, according to classified U.S. intelligence reports. | 04/09/13 16:13:52 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Obama’s drone war kills ‘others,’ not just al Qaida leaders
Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show. | 04/09/13 23:18:54 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
State Department’s Anne Smedinghoff had left Kabul for book donation event
The young U.S. State Department official who was killed Saturday in a suicide truck bombing in southern Afghanistan had been escorting Afghan journalists from Kabul who were planning to cover American officials donating books to a school, colleagues said in interviews Monday. | 04/08/13 17:50:54 By - By Jay Price
5 Americans killed in Taliban suicide blast; separate attack killed 6th, NATO says
Five Americans were killed when a bomb targeted a convoy in southern Afghanistan on Saturday in the deadliest single combat incident for U.S. citizens this year. | 04/06/13 17:17:54 By - By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq
In deadliest attack this year, Taliban storm Afghan courthouse, kill at least 44
Taliban fighters wearing Afghan army uniforms stormed a provincial courthouse in western Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 90 in a complex attack that began with the explosion of a truck bomb followed by an assault in which the attackers took hostages and kicked off a gun battle with Afghan security forces that lasted until late afternoon. | 04/03/13 17:24:54 By - By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq
DOD Inspector General finds $900 million stockpile of Stryker parts
The Army program charged with keeping thousands of eight-wheeled Strykers running over the past decade had its eye so much on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it neglected to keep its books. | 04/01/13 11:52:05 By - Adam Ashton
Cyclical nature of Afghan fighting may mask deeper trends, experts warn
NATO troops have followed an annual rhythm in the Afghan War, referred to by Pentagon officials, the soldiers on the ground and journalists alike as the “fighting season.” Generally, they describe it as beginning and ending with the warmer months. The lull is ascribed to snowbound mountain passes. But that common wisdom isn’t exactly true, and may have distorted the real picture of how the war has evolved, one counterinsurgency expert says. He thinks the Taliban have begun hoarding their fighters over the warm months, biding their time until the Americans leave. | 03/18/13 15:32:21 By - By Jay Price
In historic first, Pakistan’s civilian government completes its term without a coup
Pakistan’s Parliament completed its term Saturday and the coalition government was dissolved, the first time in the country’s history that a democratically elected government has served its full five years in office. | 03/16/13 17:18:34 By - By Saeed Shah
Afghan witnesses visit base to prepare for Staff Sgt. Bales' court-martial
Six Afghan civilians who plan to testify at the court-martial for Kandahar massacre suspect Staff Sgt. Robert Bales traveled to Joint Base Lewis-McChord last week to prepare for the trial. | 03/13/13 07:23:18 By - Adam Ashton
As U.S. troops prepare to leave, they rush to teach Afghans to hunt for roadside bombs
Improvised bombs have killed more American troops in Afghanistan than anything else since the war here began 11 years ago, and they’ll remain a favored insurgent weapon against Afghan soldiers, police and civilians after U.S. forces end their combat mission next year. | 03/11/13 00:00:00 By - By Jay Price
Terrorism still plagues Pakistan as civilian government nears end of its term
Five years after democratic rule was restored in Pakistan, the country is still without a policy to confront its huge terrorism problem, leaving this nuclear-armed country vulnerable to ever more punishing bloodshed. | 03/08/13 15:40:29 By - By Saeed Shah
U.S. consolidates Afghan bases with eye toward pulling out
At FOB Apache, U.S. military engineers are frantically finishing a second chow hall and a new, much bigger recreational building. Dozens of tents and rows of housing units are sprouting to prepare for an influx of troops who’ll raise the base’s population from several hundred to a few thousand. The building boom is a quirk of the planned pullout of more than half the U.S. and NATO forces this year. It’s one of the largest of the construction projects under way across Afghanistan, aimed at fine-tuning where troops and their equipment are based in preparation for their final departure next year. | 03/04/13 15:55:13 By - By Jay Price
U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan are at 5-year low
On the eve of the start of the final "fighting season" before the major pullout of American troops from Afghanistan begins, U.S. deaths have fallen to their lowest levels in five years. That decline is ever steeper for international forces: The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force suffered its fewest number of troops killed in December, January and February in seven years. | 03/01/13 15:20:54 By - By Jay Price
As Afghan army gets cash to buy its own supplies, some worry about corruption
The Afghan army is one of the least corrupt parts of a society where more than two-thirds of the citizens think it’s fine for bureaucrats to take bribes. Now that reputation is getting its biggest test: access to more money. Billions of dollars more. | 02/15/13 16:25:38 By - By Jay Price
Thriving Afghan zoo’s plans to expand worry its champions
Despite being no larger than a U.S. high school campus, the Kabul Zoo has become one of the most popular leisure attractions in Afghanistan. Now Kabul’s mayor wants to make the zoo much larger, with more animals, more space and more crowd-pleasing species from places such as Africa. Those who helped revive the zoo say that might be a big mistake. | 02/15/13 15:43:24 By - By Jay Price
Maybe a boar isn’t an elephant, but in Afghanistan, it’s a rarity
"Exotic species" are different in Afghanistan. For example, the Kabul Zoo is home to what’s thought to be the nation’s only captive pig, really a massive boar. Pork is haram, or forbidden, in Islam, hence the lack of domestic swine. | 02/15/13 15:41:21 By - By Jay Price
U.S. will reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan by 34,000
President Obama will announce in his State of the Union Address Tuesday night that by this time next year 34,000 troops will have returned to the United States, according to a senior administration official. | 02/12/13 10:18:40 By - Anita Kumar
Afghan peace plan in trouble as Pakistani clerics balk at proposed meeting in Kabul
A portion of a peace plan intended to smooth the way for an exit from Afghanistan of U.S.-led military forces already is in trouble, before it has even gotten underway. | 02/11/13 17:46:20 By - By Saeed Shah
Change of commanders in Afghanistan starts clock on end of U.S. war there
Inside the heavily secured headquarters of the NATO-led forces here, the man who could be the last commander of America’s longest war will officially take charge Sunday of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. | 02/08/13 16:06:16 By - By Jay Price and Matt Schofield
Pakistan Supreme Court again considers military’s secret detentions
A year ago, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the country’s military to produce seven men who’d been held in a secret prison after the civilian terrorism charges against them had collapsed. It was a dramatic scene, as the men, who hadn’t been seen in years, appeared in court – emaciated, ill, with one carrying a colostomy bag. | 02/07/13 15:14:07 By - By Saeed Shah
Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani girl shot for wanting to go to school, vows to battle on
The Pakistani schoolgirl whom al Qaida-linked militants shot last year for campaigning for girls education, said Monday that she was prepared to risk her life again for the cause. | 02/04/13 16:39:42 By - By Saeed Shah
Afghan charity sees rejuvenated Scouting program (it’s coed) as way to instill values
PARSA, the group that got the clothes collected by Maryland Boy Scout John Ferry to the cave dwellers of Bamiyan, has worked to revive Scouting in Afghanistan since 2009. | 02/04/13 16:01:04 By - By Jay Price
Afghan girl’s ambition is to teach English
In the cave-dweller’s community called Patokhlama, on a cliff face a few hundred yards east of the niche that once held the smaller of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, is a tiny school built partly into a cave, with a small dynamo of a teacher. | 02/04/13 15:59:58 By - By Jay Price
U.S. soldier and an Eagle Scout team up to help hundreds in Afghanistan caves
All Army Maj. Kenton Barber wanted was to put shoes and maybe a coat on a couple of the barefoot street kids he’d seen standing outside NATO’s downtown Kabul base last winter in the snow. Instead, he and a Boy Scout in Maryland put together an international airlift that brought much-needed winter clothes to hundreds of cave dwellers in western Afghanistan. | 02/04/13 15:58:19 By - By Jay Price
Iran-donated power plants won’t dent Afghans’ energy needs
The Iranian plants can produce electricity at a cost of nearly $1 per kilowatt hour. The American-built Tarakhil plant is much more efficient, at perhaps 23 cents per kilowatt hour. Still, it’s far too expensive to run except for a little while on the coldest days, when Kabul’s demand peaks, or if something goes wrong with the transmission lines from Uzbekistan, which sells Afghanistan power for 7 cents per kilowatt hour. | 01/28/13 14:43:24 By - By Jay Price and Rezwan Natiq
Bales trial may be in 2013 for Afghan deaths
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales could go to trial this year for allegedly murdering 16 Afghan civilians, if Army prosecutors get their way. Or his court martial could be delayed until 2014 or later, if defense attorneys are successful. | 01/17/13 20:11:00 By - Adam Ashton
Pakistan on edge as protesters flood streets, court orders prime minister’s arrest
Pakistan plunged into a political crisis Tuesday after the country’s top court ordered the arrest of the prime minister just as a protest of unprecedented size hit Islamabad, demanding the dismissal of the government. | 01/16/13 11:07:11 By - By Saeed Shah
Rep. Duncan Hunter may seek probe into delay on Medal of Honor for William Swenson
A California congressman said Tuesday that he was considering asking the Pentagon inspector general to investigate why President Barack Obama hasn’t approved the nation’s highest military award for gallantry for a former Army captain whose nomination has been stalled at the White House since last summer. | 01/15/13 19:08:34 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Idaho biologists protect troops, planes in Afghanistan
A week after Boisean George Graves arrived at Bagram Air Force Base, two mortars exploded about 100 yards from his office. This temporary job assignment would be unlike any other in the wildlife biologist’s 27 years with USDA Wildlife Services. | 01/14/13 17:48:53 By - Katy Moeller
U.S. could refuse to leave any troops in Afghanistan
The White House said for the first time Tuesday that it’s possible that no U.S. troops will be left in Afghanistan after 2014. The statement appeared to be a bid to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to accept American terms for keeping U.S. forces in his country to train Afghan security forces and prevent a return of al Qaida. | 01/08/13 18:39:29 By - By Lesley Clark and Jonathan S. Landay
Fear spurs new drive for talks with Afghan Taliban
For the last decade, the United States and Afghanistan have viewed Pakistan as part of the problem as they worked to subdue the Afghan insurgency. Yet suddenly the three countries are working together for an Afghan peace, with Pakistan handling one of the trickiest aspects of the effort: bringing the Taliban to the talks. | 12/13/12 17:30:57 By - By Saeed Shah
Pakistan, Afghanistan moving ahead on peace plan that cuts U.S. peace role
Afghanistan and Pakistan are moving ahead quickly with a new Afghan government plan that envisions peace with the Taliban by 2015, holding a summit in Turkey and working with the United States and Britain on streamlining the U.N. terrorist blacklisting system so that Afghan insurgents can be given safe passage for direct negotiations with Kabul. | 12/12/12 20:00:35 By - By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay
Army says Bales should face death penalty for 'despicable' crimes; defense disagrees
An eight-day hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales wrapped up Tuesday with an Army prosecutor saying Bales should face the death penalty for committing "the worst, most despicable crimes a human being can commit, murdering children in their own homes." | 11/13/12 15:43:47 By - Adam Ashton
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales didn't act alone, attorneys suggest
Defense attorneys for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales mined contradictory statements from Afghan villagers over the past three nights to suggest that more than one American soldier could have been involved in a March massacre that claimed the lives of 16 Afghan civilians. | 11/12/12 14:22:30 By - Adam Ashton
Bales ignored 'We are children!' shouts, Afghan witnesses say
The Afghan children awakened in the dead of night with a terrifying warning: An American soldier was in their village, and he had shot at least one man to death. “He killed my man,” their neighbor’s wife cried as she ran into their home. Sadiqullah, 13, hid behind a curtain. His older brother, Quadratullah, shouted “We are children! We are children!” only to see the soldier shoot his sister. | 11/11/12 21:14:27 By - Adam Ashton
Bales hearing: Afghan teenagers describe attack on their home
Seven Afghan witnesses testified from Afghanistan's Kandahar province in an extraordinary judicial hearing weighing evidence against Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who allegedly murdered 16 Afghan civilians and wounded six more in a nighttime rampage March 11. | 11/10/12 10:27:29 By - Adam Ashton
3rd day of Bales hearing focuses on Afghan village after slayings
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales deployed to Afghanistan in December as a respected and ambitious leader well on his way to a promotion. He left the country four months later as an accused mass murderer who reportedly shot children in the head and left them for dead in an Afghan village. | 11/08/12 14:53:12 By - Adam Ashton
Stryker leaders thought Bales was up to a tough, isolated job in Kandahar
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ leaders in his Joint Base Lewis-McChord Stryker brigade gave him an especially demanding assignment in Afghanistan last winter because they believed he was among their best soldiers, his company first sergeant said in court today. | 11/07/12 13:32:36 By - Adam Ashton
Bales wanted peers to think well of him in aftermath of Kandahar killings
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales wanted his fellow soldiers at a Special Forces outpost in southern Afghanistan to think well of him even as they sent him away from their base in custody for allegedly killing 16 civilians, witnesses said today. | 11/06/12 14:37:43 By - Adam Ashton
Bales on night of Afghan killings: 'I thought I was doing the right thing'
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ barged into a fellow soldier’s living quarters at 2 a.m. with a confession the soldier remembers clearly: Bales had killed Afghan villagers and had a chilling plan to carry out even more violence that night. | 11/05/12 16:17:20 By - Adam Ashton
Trial opens for Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghanistan killings
For seven months, Joint Base Lewis-McChord Staff Sgt. Robert Bales sat in confinement while the military stayed all but silent about its case against the four-time combat veteran accused of murdering 16 Afghan civilians in a nighttime rampage. That silence is about to end as the Army on Monday opens its first public hearing. | 11/04/12 06:00:00 By - Adam Ashton
Two South Florida Muslim clerics want witnesses in terrorism case questioned in Pakistan
Two South Florida Muslim clerics — a father and son separated by more than 50 years in age — are struggling to persuade a Miami federal judge to allow their lawyers to travel to Pakistan to question alleged Taliban sympathizers who might help their defense against terrorism charges. | 10/22/12 07:01:36 By - Jay Weaver
Despite outrage over girl’s shooting, Pakistan still split over confronting Taliban
The horrific shooting of a teenage girl by the Pakistani Taliban to silence her campaign for schooling for girls has forced a battered Pakistan to consider how it can tackle violent extremism after years of equivocation and toleration, analysts and politicians say. | 10/16/12 15:55:19 By - By Saeed Shah
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales awaits hearing on Afghan killings at Joint Base Lewis-McChord
For the first time since he was taken into custody seven months ago, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is back at Joint Base Lewis-McChord awaiting a pretrial hearing on charges that he murdered 16 Afghan civilians during his deployment with a local Stryker brigade. | 10/16/12 07:28:47 By - Adam Ashton
Pakistani Taliban call girl’s shooting ‘obligatory,’ saying she spread secular ideas
Doctors treating a 14-year-old girl shot in the head by Islamist militants because she dared to advocate schooling for girls said Wednesday that they hoped she would make a full recovery from her wounds after nightlong surgery to remove the bullet. | 10/10/12 17:42:32 By - By Saeed Shah
The Afghan war: Do the numbers add up to success?
The 33,000 U.S. troops ordered to Afghanistan two years ago to stop Taliban advances are back home, with military officials claiming that the surge accomplished its objectives. | 10/09/12 18:26:09 By - By Matthew Schofield
Girl who defied Pakistani Taliban’s as 11-year-old shot in head for ‘promoting Western culture’
A 14-year-old girl who became a national heroine when she protested the Pakistani Taliban’s ban on education for girls in her home district was shot in the head Tuesday as she waited for a ride home from her beloved school, according to officials and witnesses. | 10/09/12 16:16:01 By - By Saeed Shah
Top soldiers reassure troops on Afghanistan insider fears
Three of the Army’s highest-ranking soldiers have gone to remote outposts in one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous districts in the last month to connect with Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldiers and answer their tough questions about the rising number of insider attacks. | 10/09/12 13:37:15 By - Adam Ashton
Imran Khan’s march against U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan stops short of its goal
A convoy protesting U.S. drone strikes led by Imran Khan, the cricket superstar turned politician, stopped short Sunday of its goal to reach Pakistan’s lawless tribal area after threats of an attack from the Pakistani Taliban. | 10/07/12 16:38:24 By - By Saeed Shah
Pakistan freed of anti-terrorism obligations; U.S. billions flow instead
The Obama administration has refused for the first time to declare that Pakistan is making progress toward ending alleged military support for Islamic militant groups or preventing al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban or other extremists from staging attacks in Afghanistan. | 10/05/12 18:54:52 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Code Pink activists warned of possible terrorist strike against anti-drone rally in Pakistan
U.S. diplomats Friday warned a group of American peace activists not to attend a rally against U.S. missile strikes scheduled for this weekend, saying terrorists have threatened to attack the demonstration. | 10/05/12 15:50:36 By - By Saeed Shah
Soldiers learn insurgent tricks for Afghanistan
The Army calls it Advance Situational Awareness Training. Soldiers spent several days learning subtle schemes that insurgents use to fool and harm friendly forces. Trainers took the ploys directly from intelligence reports describing the enemy’s latest tactics. | 09/26/12 15:42:45 By - Adam Ashton
Suicide bombing in Afghanistan’s capital kills 12; insurgents cite anti-Islamic video
Nine foreign nationals and their Afghan driver were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-packed car into their mini-bus near the Kabul airport, government officials said. Two Afghan bystanders were also killed, said a statement from Afghanistan’s interior ministry. | 09/18/12 10:38:50 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Afghan soldiers recount 4 U.S. troops’ heroic deaths at Ganjgal
The men received Bronze Stars posthumously for their actions, but the details of what took place before they died on Sept. 8, 2009, when the Taliban ambushed a joint American-Afghan patrol in Afghanistan’s Ganjgal Valley, hadn’t been disclosed. | 09/13/12 15:34:22 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Afghan survivors of Ganjgal battle dispute official account of Medal of Honor feats
Nine Afghan soldiers who survived a 2009 battle that brought the first Medal of Honor to a living Marine since the Vietnam War have disputed the official accounts of how Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer won the country’s highest military decoration. | 09/13/12 15:23:00 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
U.S. will declare Haqqanis a foreign terrorist group, risking Pakistan ties
In a move that risks reopening deep fissures in relations with Pakistan, the Obama administration will designate the deadliest Afghan insurgent group as a foreign terrorist organization, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress Friday. | 09/07/12 19:38:42 By - By Jonathan S. Landay and Hannah Allam McClatchy Newspapers
Pakistani girl gets bail on blasphemy charge
A Pakistani court ordered the release on bail Friday of a mentally disabled Christian girl who’d been jailed on blasphemy charges, a decision that brought some sense of justice here but didn’t end the threat the girl faces for allegedly burning pages of the Quran. | 09/07/12 17:26:14 By - By Saeed Shah
Unexpected support for Christian girl in Pakistan blasphemy case may be sign of change
The heart-wrenching tale of a Christian girl charged with blasphemy could, at last, have forced the beginning of a change of attitudes on an incendiary issue that has led to the assassination of two government officials and widespread tensions between the country’s Muslim majority and its tiny Christian minority, officials and analysts now believe. | 09/06/12 17:54:00 By - By Saeed Shah
McClatchy’s Ali Safi wins Dart Center fellowship to study trauma reporting
Ali Safi, a special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers in Kabul, Afghanistan, has received a fellowship from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, the center announced Wednesday. | 09/05/12 16:58:15 By -
Court upholds Afghan Taliban’s narco-terrorism conviction in U.S.
An appellate court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a former Afghan Taliban member who’s serving a first-of-its-kind life sentence in the Southern California desert. | 09/04/12 16:43:37 By - By Michael Doyle
Suicide bomber rams U.S. vehicle in Pakistan
A bomb injured two Americans employed at U.S. consulate in Peshawar Monday when a suicide attacker rammed their vehicle, officials said. Two local staff members of the mission also were injured. | 09/03/12 16:13:30 By - By Saeed Shah
Suicide bomber rams U.S. vehicle in Pakistan
A bomb injured two Americans employed at the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, along with two local staff, when a suicide attacker rammed their vehicle Monday, officials said. | 09/03/12 07:51:50 By - Saeed Shah
Report: Quran burnings revealed distrust at Afghanistan's Bagram jail
Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s top Army police unit went to Afghanistan early this year with ranks of veteran soldiers experienced in running jails in Muslim countries. It incorporated cultural lessons in its training as its soldiers prepared for the nine months they’d spend managing the primary military prison in the war zone. Yet on its first day overseeing the prison at Bagram Airfield, the soldiers in the 42nd Military Police Brigade found themselves at the center of the worst cultural misunderstanding of the 11-year-old war, one that cost the lives of six U.S. service members and 30 Afghans. | 08/31/12 14:27:08 By - Adam Ashton
Neighbors of Pakistani Christian girl in blasphemy case living in fear
The Christians are trickling back to the poor neighborhood in Islamabad that they fled after a blasphemy allegation ignited terror earlier this month. But fear still haunts them. | 08/30/12 19:53:48 By - By Saheed Shah
Afghan minister accused of abuses to become new intelligence chief
An Afghan Cabinet minister dogged by torture allegations is slated to become the new chief of Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security. | 08/30/12 17:00:41 By - By Jon Stephenson
Girl in Pakistan blasphemy case said to be minor, boosting chance of acquittal
A Christian girl accused of blasphemy is a juvenile, according to a medical report presented to a Pakistani court, a finding that improves her chance of being released on bail and eventually acquitted of the charges. | 08/28/12 14:45:52 By - By Saeed Shah
Pakistan's conservative mullahs question case of disabled girl charged with blasphemy
A group of Islamic leaders in Pakistan lent strong support Monday to a mentally disabled Christian girl accused of blasphemy in an unprecedented public move that was the first denunciation by hard-line mullahs of the country's controversial blasphemy law. | 08/27/12 17:53:00 By - By Saeed Shah
Taliban kills 17 Afghan villagers — was dancing the reason?
Taliban insurgents killed 17 Afghan civilians Sunday and beheaded as many as 15 of them in the southern province of Helmand, officials said Monday. But the circumstance of their deaths was sharply disputed. | 08/27/12 17:13:24 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Afghan officials say they broke up terror plot that targeted Parliament
Afghan security forces foiled an insurgent plot to attack Afghanistan’s parliament and the home of one of the country’s leaders, Afghan officials said Sunday. | 08/12/12 19:52:12 By - By Jon Stephenson
3 more coalition dead in another ‘green-on-blue’ attack in Afghanistan
An Afghan believed to be a police officer shot and killed three coalition soldiers late Friday at a military base in the Garmsir district of restive Helmand province, coalition officials confirmed Saturday. | 08/11/12 16:47:08 By - By Jon Stephenson
Uniformed Afghan kills 3 U.S. troops in 3rd such incident this week
Three Americans were killed Friday when a man in an Afghan security force uniform turned his weapon against them, U.S. military officials said. | 08/10/12 15:57:16 By - By Jon Stephenson
Afghan civilian casualties down, but U.N. warns trend not sign of move toward peace
The number of civilians killed or wounded by violence in Afghanistan dropped 15 percent in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2011, the United Nations reported Wednesday. But U.N. officials cautioned that the decrease ought not to be seen as a sign that Afghanistan was becoming less violent. | 08/08/12 15:32:17 By - By Jon Stephenson
2 U.S. soldiers wounded in thwarted suicide blast in Afghanistan
Two U.S. soldiers and 11 Afghan civilians were injured Tuesday when a suicide truck bomb exploded outside a coalition base in the eastern province of Logar, provincial officials said. | 08/07/12 17:13:07 By - Ali Safi
Questions surround Army captain’s ‘lost’ nomination for Medal of Honor
The 2009 battle of Ganjgal is perhaps the most remarkable of the Afghan war for its extraordinary heroism and deadly incompetence. It produced dozens of casualties, career-killing reprimands and a slew of commendations for valor. They included two Medal of Honor nominations, one for former Army Capt. William Swenson. Yet months after the first living Army officer in some 40 years was put in for the nation’s highest military award for gallantry, his nomination vanished into a bureaucratic black hole. | 08/06/12 16:39:53 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Afghan government forces kill five potential suicide bombers in raid on compound
Afghanistan security forces killed five potential suicide bombers in an early raid on a compound in Kabul after a five-hour gun battle Thursday with Taliban-led insurgents, officials said. | 08/02/12 09:10:57 By - By Ali Safi
After 30 years, Pakistan rolls up welcome mat for Afghan refugees
Pakistan plans to cancel refugee status at the end of this year for the 3 million Afghans who are living in the country, officials have told McClatchy, leaving the refugees facing possible forced resettlement in their homeland, a war-torn country that many of them barely know. | 07/23/12 17:05:32 By - By Saeed Shah
U.N. doctor injured in latest blow to anti-polio campaign in Pakistan
Pakistan’s drive against polio was thrown into disarray Tuesday after a foreign doctor working on a vaccination campaign was shot, a day after the Taliban reiterated a ban on immunization in the country’s tribal areas, officials said. | 07/17/12 17:48:41 By - By Saeed Shah
Suicide blast at a wedding kills lawmaker in Afghanistan
A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest Saturday at a wedding in the northern Samangan province killing at least 22 people including the bride’s father, a prominent Afghan parliamentarian, officials said. | 07/14/12 10:42:10 By - By Ali Safi
Adil Omar, a young rapper with explosive lyrics, breaks taboos in Pakistan
Adil Omar has struck a chord with educated Pakistani youth who – after five years of Taliban terrorist attacks – are using artistic expression to rebel against the moral policing of their conservative society and being labeled as extremists in the West. | 07/12/12 15:41:00 By - By Tom Hussain
As death toll mounts, coalition insists Afghanistan war is on track
Amid a two-day spate of attacks that killed more than three dozen people, including seven American soldiers, the U.S.-led coalition insisted Monday that the war in Afghanistan is on track and that Afghan security forces will be ready to defend their country when international combat troops withdraw. | 07/09/12 18:59:13 By - By Jon Stephenson
Afghans greet upbeat Clinton remarks with deep skepticism
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton painted a positive picture of Afghanistan’s fledgling security forces in a visit Saturday and promised Afghans that the United States would never abandon their country, but several Afghans weary of the U.S. presence expressed doubt. | 07/07/12 20:07:36 By - By Jon Stephenson
Afghan soldier wounds 5 U.S. soldiers in base attack
An Afghan soldier shot and wounded five U.S. soldiers late Tuesday at a base in eastern Afghanistan in what is the latest in a series of “green on blue” attacks by local forces on their coalition counterparts. | 07/04/12 14:35:59 By - By Jon Stephenson
Pakistan to reopen supply routes after U.S. apology for troop deaths
Pakistan agreed Tuesday to reopen supply routes to the U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan after the United States apologized for the first time for inadvertently killing 24 Pakistani troops who were manning two border posts last November, signaling a new attempt by the nominal allies to repair their severely damaged relationship. | 07/03/12 19:41:06 By - By Jonathan S. Landay
Afghanistan isn't ready to govern itself, visiting lawmakers say
Afghanistan is far from ready to govern and police itself or defend its jagged borders, several members of that country's legislative branch said on a visit to the California Capitol on Monday. | 07/03/12 06:55:23 By - Stephen Magagnini
Pakistanis say political sideshow distracts from their real problems
At the shabby Waseem Cafe – one of the few places in the heart of the affluent, purpose-built capital of Islamabad where ordinary Pakistanis gather – the mood on a recent afternoon was grim, and patrons were deeply disillusioned with Islamabad’s main business: politics. | 07/02/12 15:38:53 By - By Saeed Shah
'Green on blue' attack in Afghanistan claims 3 coalition soldiers
Three coalition soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan Sunday when a man wearing an Afghan police uniform turned his weapon against them, coalition officials said. | 07/01/12 16:46:55 By - Jon Stephenson
Taliban attack on district near Pakistan border
A key district in the northeastern province of Nuristan bordering Pakistan could fall to insurgents unless urgent steps are taken to improve security there, local officials warned in the wake of a Taliban attack. | 06/30/12 17:13:34 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
At Afghan university, students fear for the future
The Taliban attack last week on a popular resort outside Kabul not only terrified locals and undermined the U.S. and Afghan government narrative that security here is improving. If the views of Kabul University students are any guide, the attack also showed that President Hamid Karzai’s administration is fast losing the confidence of a generation of aspiring professionals critical to rebuilding Afghanistan. | 06/27/12 17:32:01 By - By Jon Stephenson
Rise of Islamist seminaries is latest worry in Islamabad, Pakistan
Islamabad is practically besieged by seminaries run by militant organizations, which house about 24,800 students, mostly from religiously conservative areas of the country. Analysts say that the Pakistani military, which dominates foreign and security policy decisions, has prevented the weak civilian government from acting against the seminaries. | 06/26/12 16:52:33 By - By Tom Hussain
Qargha Lake siege undercuts U.S.-led narrative that Afghanistan war is on track
The handful of insurgents who launched an assault on a resort on Qargha Lake, west of Kabul, provided yet another deadly reminder Friday that security in Afghanistan is hardly as rosy as portrayed by U.S.-led coalition commanders and Pentagon officials in Washington. | 06/22/12 17:54:00 By - By Jon Stephenson
3 coalition soldiers among dozens dead, wounded in Afghanistan attacks
More than two dozen Afghans were killed and dozens more wounded Wednesday in two insurgent attacks in eastern Afghanistan, including an attack in Khost province that also killed three coalition soldiers. | 06/20/12 17:22:27 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Taliban attacks leave 23 dead in Afghanistan
Twenty-three people have been killed in a spate of violence in southern Afghanistan, including civilians, policemen, insurgents, and a coalition soldier reportedly killed in a “green-on-blue” attack by Afghan policemen. | 06/19/12 09:36:53 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi McClatchy Newspapers
Yousuf Raza Gilani disqualified as prime minister as Pakistan legal battle intensifies
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was dismissed from office Tuesday by the courts, a victim of an intensifying conflict between the government and the judiciary that has plunged the country into fresh political turmoil. | 06/19/12 16:52:52 By - By Saeed Shah
Bomb attack kills 6 in Afghanistan’s Kapisa province
Four police officers and two civilians were killed Monday when Taliban insurgents exploded a remote-controlled bomb in eastern Kapisa province, local officials said. | 06/18/12 12:56:48 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Judges in Pakistan throw out case of tycoon Malik Riaz Hussain
Attempting to defuse a legal scandal that threatened Pakistan’s judiciary, the Supreme Court in Islamabad on Thursday declared “utterly baseless” charges that the integrity of its chief justice had been compromised by claims that his son had accepted money and gifts from a rich businessman. | 06/14/12 17:21:31 By - By Saeed Shah
Latest intrigue in Pakistan embroils crusading chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry
A new scandal involving a powerful tycoon has embroiled the only public institution in Pakistan that was considered clean: the judiciary. | 06/12/12 18:58:04 By - By Saeed Shah
U.S. - Pakistan supply route negotiations are taking a break, but not stalled
Pentagon Spokesman George Little insists negotiations between Pakistan and the United States over the use of ground routes to supply American and NATO forces have not stalled. | 06/11/12 15:05:19 By - Matthew Schofield
French soldiers killed, wounded in Afghanistan
Four French soldiers were killed and five wounded on Saturday in the eastern province of Kapisa, the French government said. | 06/09/12 10:59:43 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Villagers in Afghanistan say NATO airstrike killed 18 civilians
A visit to a village that was hit by a NATO airstrike reveals that it’s almost certain that Afghan women, teenagers and children were killed, contrary to NATO claims. | 06/07/12 19:41:19 By - By Ali Safi and Jon Stephenson
Panetta calls for mending U.S.-Pakistan ties as supply talks continue
Money-focused talks to repair broken U.S.-Pakistan ties and reopen NATO supply routes into Afghanistan are taking place in Islamabad this week, officials said, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Wednesday that the relationship between the two countries must be mended. | 06/06/12 18:10:19 By - By Saeed Shah
Suicide bombings in Kandahar, airstrike in Logar mark deadly day in Afghanistan
On the deadliest day in Afghanistan this year, 22 civilians were killed and 50 were wounded Wednesday in two suicide bombings in the restive southern province of Kandahar, while 18 civilians were reported killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike in eastern Logar province. | 06/06/12 14:52:33 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
U.S.: Al Qaida’s No. 2, Abu Yahya al Libi, killed in Pakistan
U.S. officials on Tuesday confirmed the death in Pakistan of the No. 2 official in al Qaida’s central organization, Abu Yahya al Libi, the latest senior operative killed in the United States’ campaign against the terrorist organization. | 06/05/12 18:33:25 By - By Matthew Schofield and Lesley Clark
Afghanistan withdrawal fuels fears in neighboring Pakistan
The impending withdrawal of U.S.-led NATO combat troops from Afghanistan is raising worries next door in Pakistan, where a growing number of experts are warning that the forces’ departure could reinvigorate a domestic insurgency that Pakistan’s military is barely keeping at bay. | 06/05/12 15:02:35 By - By Tom Hussain
Coalition raid frees 4 aid workers in Afghanistan
Special forces from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan stormed a mountain hideout in the remote northeastern province of Badakhshan early Saturday, freeing four aid workers and killing their captors. | 06/02/12 14:32:25 By - Ali Safi and Jon Stephenson
Army accuses Bales of using steroids, alcohol at base in Kandahar
The Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier who allegedly massacred Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province three months ago now faces charges that he used alcohol and steroids during his deployment. | 06/01/12 15:12:54 By - Adam Ashton
Suicide attacks target police in Afghanistan
A series of Taliban bombings targeted police officers across Afghanistan on Thursday, killing nine officers and a civilian, local officials said. | 05/31/12 16:39:52 By - By Ali Safi
8 civilians killed in NATO airstrike in Afghanistan
Afghan and U.S.-led coalition officials are investigating reports that eight civilians – including six children – were killed when their home in the eastern province of Paktia was bombed on Saturday by a coalition aircraft. | 05/27/12 11:13:19 By - Jon Stephenson
U.S. strategic partnership agreement ratified by Afghan Parliament's lower house
Parliament's lower house on Saturday ratified the U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership agreement that was signed in Kabul on May 1 by President Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai. | 05/26/12 15:02:15 By - Jon Stephenson
2 Western health workers kidnapped in northern Afghanistan
The women were working for Medair, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, and were traveling by horseback when they were kidnapped. The company asked that their nationalities not be publicized. | 05/23/12 17:46:38 By - By Jon Stephenson
Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped CIA track bin Laden, sentenced for treason in Pakistan
Dr. Afridi was sentenced in a tribal court under colonial-era laws even though his alleged offense, running a fake vaccination campaign intended to capture DNA from residents of bin Laden’s compound, was committed in Abbottabad, where tribal laws don’t apply. | 05/23/12 16:36:28 By - By Saeed Shah
Voices from Afghanistan: Few expect miracles from NATO
As NATO leaders met Monday in Chicago to discuss the alliance’s exit from Afghanistan and their commitment to the restive nation afterward, Afghans expressed a mixture of optimism, cynicism and fatalism about the future of their country. | 05/21/12 15:42:49 By - By Jon Stephenson
NATO leaders endorse Obama's Afghanistan exit plan
NATO leaders on Monday adopted President Barack Obama’s exit strategy from the nearly 11-year-old U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, cementing an “irreversible” pullout of foreign combat troops that will leave Afghan security forces with the leading role in combat operations by the summer of 2013. | 05/21/12 19:47:04 By - By Jonathan S. Landay and Steven Thomma
Afghanistan toll as NATO leaders gather: 13 dead in suicide bombing Saturday; 2 U.S. troops killed Friday
_ As NATO leaders prepared for a two-day summit in Chicago to plot their armed forces’ exit from Afghanistan in less than two years, a suicide bomber on Saturday detonated his explosive vest at a police checkpoint in eastern Khost province, killing 10 civilians, including two children, and three Afghan policemen. | 05/19/12 17:38:16 By - By Ali Safi and Jon Stephenson
As NATO prepares to meet, Taliban attack reminder of volatility in Afghanistan
Three days ahead of a summit meeting in Chicago of NATO leaders to plot their countries’ departure from Afghanistan, the Taliban on Thursday provided a stark reminder of the challenges that lie ahead. | 05/17/12 14:01:24 By - By Ali Safi
Insurgents storm governor's office in western Afghanistan
Four suspected insurgents stormed the governor’s compound in the capital of western Farah province Thursday morning, killing six policemen and a civilian. | 05/17/12 08:26:56 By - Ali Safi
Survivors recall horror of night Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly shot up Afghan village
The story that Rafiullah and Haji Mohammad Naim told McClatchy is the first public account by survivors in their village of the March night when a man shot and killed 17 people in two Afghan villages. U.S. officials have accused Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales of the massacre. | 05/16/12 16:39:34 By - By Jon Stephenson
Pakistan agrees to reopen NATO supply route to Afghanistan, but for a fee
The cost of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan is about to rise by $365 million annually under an agreement that would reopen a key NATO supply route through Pakistan that’s been closed for nearly six months. | 05/15/12 18:29:02 By - By Saeed Shah
Key Afghanistan peace envoy, Mawlawi Arsala Rahmani, gunned down in Kabul
Unknown assailants on Sunday shot and killed a senior Afghan peace negotiator, government officials said, in the latest major blow to President Hamid Karzai’s two-year-old effort to negotiate a truce with insurgents. | 05/13/12 15:36:30 By - By Ali Safi
Kidnapped American, Warren Weinstein, pleads for his life in new video
An American aid worker kidnapped last year by al Qaida militants in Pakistan has made an impassioned video appeal to President Barack Obama to save his life. | 05/07/12 15:40:15 By - By Saeed Shah
Osama bin Laden was angry, increasingly irrelevant in final years, letters show
Seventeen letters seized from Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout by the Navy SEALs who found and killed him there last May expose the international terrorist icon in his final years as increasingly irrelevant to his own movement. | 05/03/12 18:07:13 By - By Matthew Schofield
Taliban attack follows Obama’s bid to close Afghanistan war
President Barack Obama sought to use a surprise visit to Afghanistan to start lowering the curtain on the longest war in U.S. history. But as Taliban-led insurgents showed only hours after Obama flew home Wednesday, the bloodletting appears far from over. | 05/02/12 16:46:12 By - By Jonathan S. Landay and Ali Safi
Obama speech to the troops at Bagram, Afghanistan
Obama speech to the troops at Bagram, Afghanistan | 05/01/12 19:03:53 By -
Afghan army members prefer light touch of U.S. to Soviets' heavy hand
Soviets shaped the Afghan army that Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hashim remembers from his days as an up-and-coming officer. They tended to give the orders, as if his countrymen were working for the Russians. | 05/01/12 18:11:21 By - Adam Ashton
Fact Sheet: The U.S.-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement
In May 2010, in Washington, DC, President Obama and President Karzai committed our two countries to negotiate and conclude a strategic partnership that would provide a framework for our future relationship. On May 1, 2012, President Obama and President Karzai signed the Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the United States of America. | 05/01/12 16:51:51 By -
In Afghanistan, Obama says wars of 9/11 nearing an end
President Obama told Americans Tuesday that after a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “we can see the light of a new day,” even as he signed an agreement that extended the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. But deadly suicide bombings hours after Obama left underscored Kabul's continued vulnerability. | 05/01/12 20:24:38 By - By Jonathan S. Landay and Lesley Clark
Afghan general says 'Americans work side by side' to build Kabul command
Soviets shaped the Afghan army that Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hashim remembers from his days as an up-and-coming officer. They tended to give the orders, as if his countrymen were working for the Russians. The Americans assisting him today use a lighter touch as they aim to restore a different kind of army, he said. | 05/01/12 07:38:34 By - Adam Ashton
A year after bin Laden raid, Pakistan still harboring U.S.’s biggest enemies
A year after Osama bin Laden was found and killed, Pakistan still harbors, willingly or unwillingly, America’s greatest enemies: current al Qaida chief Ayman al Zawahiri and Afghan insurgent leaders Sirajuddin Haqqani and Mullah Mohammad Omar. | 04/30/12 17:34:38 By - By Saeed Shah
Tacoma VFW post helps family of Robert Bales
Kari Bales and her two young children stayed hidden in plain sight at the Daffodil Parade on April 14. They were among about a dozen people waving at the crowd from a float entered by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 91 in Tacoma. | 04/30/12 07:38:17 By - Christian Hill
Conviction of Pakistan leader roils new democracy
Pakistan was thrown into fresh political turmoil Thursday after the prime minister was convicted of contempt of court. | 04/26/12 16:54:52 By - By Saeed Shah
Despite early cultural mistakes, female soldiers find ways to relate to Afghan women
When Pfc. Renee Buschman was first assigned to reach out to Afghan women to learn about their lives, she fell flat. Buschman wrote a flyer saying she and another female soldier from Joint Base Lewis-McChord wanted to meet women and talk in the rural villages surrounding their base here in southern Afghanistan. It touched a nerve. The messages offended the villagers they wanted to win over. | 04/25/12 18:12:18 By - Adam Ashton
U.S. and Afghanistan agree on strategic partnership
President Hamid Karza's government announced on Sunday that it has finalized an agreement on a long-term Afghan-U.S strategic partnership. | 04/22/12 16:09:35 By - By Ali Safi
Airliner crashes in Pakistan, killing all 127 aboard
An airliner on a domestic flight crashed Friday near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad with 127 people on board after trying to land in stormy weather, officials and news reports said. | 04/20/12 20:58:54 By - By Saeed Shah
Lewis-McChord unit enters Taliban 'homeground' in Afghanistan
The 3,500 soldiers in a Joint Base Lewis-McChord Stryker brigade are taking on new territory in Afghanistan this week, absorbing one of the war’s most challenging corners as they cover more ground than they’ve ever covered on this or their three Iraq combat tours. | 04/20/12 07:22:03 By - Adam Ashton
Afghan insurgents post propaganda videos on latest attacks
Videos and pictures that the Taliban have posted online purportedly show the insurgents who staged this week’s attacks in Kabul and three provinces, with two fighters declaring that the suicide missions were to avenge the inadvertent burning of Qurans and the alleged massacre of villagers by U.S. troops. The material is highly stylized, perhaps indicating that the operations were more for propaganda purposes than military gain. | 04/19/12 16:53:47 By - By Ali Safi and Jonathan S. Landay
In Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed protests $10 million U.S. bounty for his capture
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the Pakistani Islamist leader on whom the United States placed a $10 million bounty earlier this month, filed a court challenge Wednesday demanding that the Pakistani government provide him security and pressure Washington to lift the reward for his capture. | 04/18/12 18:13:44 By - By Saeed Shah
New Afghanistan war photos part of a long, controversial tradition
The photos released Wednesday of U.S. service members posing with fallen enemies in Afghanistan are ‘morally repugnant,’ officials say, but hardly the first to show soldiers behaving badly in wartime. | 04/18/12 17:30:28 By - By Matthew Schofield
Pakistan deports bin Laden’s family to Saudi Arabia
Pakistan early Wednesday was scheduled to deport the 14 members of Osama bin Laden’s family who had lived with him in a garrison town near Islamabad until U.S. forces killed him in a raid in May 2011. | 04/17/12 16:26:01 By - By Tom Hussain
Karzai blames NATO ‘failure’ in Afghanistan attacks
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday blamed an “intelligence failure” by his government and NATO for a wave of suicide attacks that Afghan and NATO officials said they suspected were led by a Pakistan-based extremist group. | 04/16/12 17:30:45 By - By Jonathan S. Landay and Ali Safi
Taliban attack U.S. embassy and government sites across Afghanistan
Insurgents took over a high-rise building on Sunday and began firing rocket propelled grenades and assault weapons at government buildings and towards the U.S. Embassy. | 04/15/12 06:47:00 By - Jonathan S. Landay and Ali Safi
Taliban lead attacks on U.S. bases and government sites across Afghanistan
Taliban-led insurgents opened a spring offensive Sunday with a wave of coordinated suicide missions, firing at embassies and government offices from seized buildings in Kabul and attacking U.S. bases and police stations in three eastern provinces. | 04/15/12 18:19:27 By - Jonathan S. Landay and Ali Safi
Burhanuddin Rabbani's son named to restart Afghanistan peace efforts
The eldest son of the slain former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani was chosen Saturday to replace his father as head of the council charged with overseeing reconciliation with the Taliban-led insurgency. | 04/14/12 14:38:30 By - Ali Safi and Jonathan S. Landay
For Lewis-McChord troops, restoring Afghan sovereignty means locals make decisions
When U.S. forces depart this rural district, home to the tribe of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, they’ll leave behind small monuments to their shifting strategies in 11 years of fighting here. | 04/13/12 07:28:24 By - Adam Ashton
After Himalayan avalanche, many in Pakistan call for patching ties with India
The probable loss of an entire garrison of Pakistani troops to a Himalayan avalanche on the country's disputed border with India has firmed national support for settling the longstanding political disputes between the nuclear-armed neighbors. | 04/12/12 15:10:50 By - Tom Hussain
Karzai says he's considering early presidential election
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that he is considering moving the election for his successor up by a year to avoid complicating the drawdown of U.S.-led NATO forces due to be completed by the end of 2014. | 04/12/12 08:54:00 By - Ali Safi
Confusion reigned in aftermath of Afghanistan massacre
One month after Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales allegedly went on a killing spree here in southern Afghanistan, the saying that "the first casualty of war is truth" continues to hold true in the deaths of eight adults and nine children in the villages of Najiban and Alkozai. | 04/11/12 17:18:51 By - Jon Stephenson
Suicide bombings target Afghanistan government offices, kill 19
At least 19 people, most of them police officers, died and dozens of others were injured Tuesday in three suicide attacks on government buildings in western and southern Afghanistan, officials said. | 04/10/12 11:29:48 By - Ali Safi
Lewis-McChord troops escort convoy across hostile Afghanistan terrain
The troops from Joint Base Lewis-McChord rolled out in full force, their armored vehicles protecting a convoy of supplies badly needed by Afghan soldiers stationed across hostile, rugged terrain. | 04/10/12 07:28:41 By - Adam Ashton
Weapons smugglers thrive in chaos of western Pakistan
The P226, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol made by the weapons manufacturer SIG Sauer, is a favorite of law enforcement agencies and militaries worldwide, from the FBI and Navy SEALs to NATO troops in Afghanistan and police departments across the United States. | 04/09/12 15:10:29 By - Tom Hussain
3 U.S. soldiers among dead in northern Afghanistan
Three American soldiers were among at least nine people who were killed Wednesday when a suicide bomber wearing civilian clothes blew himself up in the northwestern Afghan province of Faryab, local officials said. | 04/04/12 11:27:17 By - Ali Safi
Lewis-McChord soldiers in Afghanistan see sudden action
The insurgents didn’t have a chance. Helicopter surveillance spotted them moving to a weapons cache and preparing to bury a powerful homemade bomb. It weighed 45 pounds, and they took turns carrying it. | 04/04/12 08:27:26 By - Adam Ashton
Soldiers at Afghanistan post befriend combat tortoise named Terry
Walking in the dark toward the scene of an Apache helicopter attack against a team of insurgents, Sgt. Dison Ittu looked down and saw something that might help the days go by a little faster on his yearlong deployment to Afghanistan. The tortoise at his feet looked like just the right kind of pal to share with his platoon. | 04/03/12 17:28:21 By - Adam Ashton
U.S. announces $10 million reward for Pakistani militant figure
Pakistan was stung Tuesday by the U.S. State Department's announcement of a $10 million reward for the capture or conviction of the founder of a Pakistani militant group that allegedly carried out the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India's largest city. | 04/03/12 17:03:11 By - Tom Hussain
Only one shooter likely in Kandahar killings, Afghan investigator says
The chief Afghan investigator in last month's slayings of 17 civilians says there's strong evidence that only one killer was involved, a view that puts him at odds with Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. | 04/03/12 16:50:21 By - Jon Stephenson
At southern Afghan outpost, U.S. soldiers prepare for transition
Last year, Taliban threats and buried roadside bombs kept farmers from selling their fruit at marketplaces outside this small community in southern Afghanistan. Similar intimidation stopped residents from sending their children to school or attending their bazaar. | 04/01/12 00:01:40 By - Adam Ashton
Suspect in Afghanistan killings had history of alcohol incidents
Staff Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan civilians, showed risk factors for alcohol abuse, including acting out violently while drunk, but it's unclear whether the Army knew about this behavior or whether he ever was referred to treatment. | 04/01/12 03:01:01 By - Adam Lynn
Baluchistan separatists in Pakistan beset by divisions
The insurgents' presence is obvious in the mountains and ravines of Pakistan's western Baluchistan province, where hilltops are fortified with slabs of rock to serve as secure lookout posts for snipers. | 03/29/12 17:25:43 By - Tom Hussain
In remote Baluchistan, Pakistan fights a shadowy war
The family of Jalil Reki learned from television news that his body had been found, more than two years after the political activist was allegedly abducted by Pakistani security officials. Scarred by torture and shot through the back of the head, his grisly story is replicated across Pakistan's remote western province of Baluchistan. | 03/29/12 17:20:29 By - Saeed Shah
Drones let U.S. soldiers monitor Afghan terrain
As far as Sgt. Christopher Moore can tell, the threats he and his fellow Stryker soldiers face here are the same they encountered in Iraq: Insurgent networks ferrying fighters and explosives to take hidden shots at American troops. The big difference is terrain. Iraq’s flat deserts are a distant memory. Moore’s new territory spans tall, craggy peaks and remote villages nestled in Afghanistan’s poorest province, Zabul. | 03/28/12 14:42:25 By - Adam Ashton
Big suicide bomb plot allegedly involving Afghan soldiers uncovered in Kabul
Afghan authorities arrested as many as 18 people, including more than a dozen soldiers, after thwarting a major suicide bomb attack in Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan intelligence officials cited Tuesday by local and international media. | 03/27/12 20:36:38 By - By Jon Stephenson
Family of Robert Bales seeks donations for defense fund
The family of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier charged in a bloody rampage in Southern Afghanistan is seeking donations to pay legal costs that some experts expect will run well into the six figures. | 03/27/12 07:27:25 By - Adam Lynn and Christian Hill
Afghan 'allies' kill 3 more soldiers from U.S.-led coalition
Three soldiers from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan — two of them British and the nationality of the third unknown — were killed Monday, apparently by members of the Afghan security forces in two separate incidents, the latest in a series of "green on blue" shootings. | 03/26/12 18:42:09 By - Jon Stephenson
U.S.-led talks with Taliban going nowhere, report says
A prominent international think tank has warned that U.S.-led talks with the Taliban are going nowhere and has called for the United Nations to take the lead in peace negotiations to prevent Afghanistan sliding into civil war. | 03/25/12 21:33:58 By - Jon Stephenson
Roadside bomb kills U.S. soldier, eight Afghans in southern Afghanistan
A roadside bomb exploded in Kandahar province on Saturday, killing a U.S. soldier, seven Afghan police officers and an Afghan translator, local officials said. | 03/25/12 21:03:52 By - Ali Safi
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales formally charged in Afghanistan massacre
The U.S. military on Friday formally charged Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales with 17 counts of premeditated murder, meaning the 38-year-old soldier could face the death penalty if convicted of a March 11 rampage in southern Afghanistan. | 03/23/12 15:13:35 By - Matt Schofield
Attorney: Bales’ court-martial to be held in Washington state base
John Henry Browne, attorney for the soldier suspected of killing 17 Afghan civilians, told KOMO News Radio this morning he believes staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ court-martial would be held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. | 03/23/12 13:09:43 By - Adam Lynn
Staff Sgt. Bales to be charged with 17 murder counts
The American soldier suspected in the bloodiest rampage against civilians in the decade of the Afghan war is expected to be charged Friday with 17 counts of murder. | 03/23/12 06:29:11 By - Matthew Schofield
After Bales' arrest, military tried to delete him from Web
Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Army staff sergeant who's accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the U.S. military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service. | 03/21/12 19:07:13 By - David Goldstein and Matthew Schofield
Murder case against U.S. soldier presents challenges for prosecutors
In the United States, a murder case can be pretty straightforward: the victim dies, police collect evidence and use it to pursue suspects. But as U.S. military prosecutors prepare to charge Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales in the deaths of 16 Afghan villagers, the challenges they face are certain to make the high-profile case anything but straightforward. | 03/20/12 19:13:36 By - Matthew Schofield
Congress airs differences on when to exit from Afghanistan
Leaders of the House Armed Services Committee differed Tuesday on how quickly to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan, while the top commander of forces there said the U.S. campaign remains "on track" despite a spate of recent setbacks. | 03/20/12 17:43:26 By - Rob Hotakainen
Wife of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales releases statement
Karilyn Bales, the wife of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier suspected of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan, released a written statement Monday through the family’s spokesman, Seattle attorney Lance Rosen. | 03/20/12 07:26:56 By - Christian Hill
Military struggles to regulate information on Afghanistan suspect
For nearly a week, the military kept a lid of secrecy over the Army soldier from Joint Base Lewis-McChord suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers. But as the week wore on, the Defense Department began to lose control of the flow of information about the suspect, and the portrait that emerged was of a soldier who earlier had performed with honor on the battlefield, yet struggled on the homefront. | 03/19/12 14:13:44 By - Hal Bernton
Former Lewis-McChord soldiers weigh in on Bales
Two former Stryker soldiers who've gone on multiple combat deployments and dealt with the trauma that can follow them offer divergent perspectives about whether such experiences could have played a role in Staff Sgt. Robert Bales' alleged massacre of Afghan civilians. | 03/19/12 06:39:54 By - Lewis Kamb
Is Lewis-McChord really 'most troubled base in the military'?
Some have connected the March 11 massacre by a U.S. soldier to other problems at the base: a record number of suicides, several investigations into the treatment of soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a "kill team" convicted of murdering civilians for sport in Afghanistan and a string of other crimes involving present and past soldiers. | 03/18/12 16:09:44 By - Christian Hill and Adam Ashton
Staff Sgt. Robert Bales named as suspect in Afghan massacre
A complex portrait emerged Friday of the suspect in the killings of 16 Afghan civilians: Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was hurt about being passed over for a military promotion, and as a civilian had brushes with the law and spent time in anger management. | 03/16/12 21:35:44 By - By Rob Carson, Debbie Carfazzo and Matthew Schofield
Afghan-massacre suspect Staff Sgt. Robert Bales en route to U.S.
Despite claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that one man couldn't have killed 16 villagers, American military officials insisted Friday that Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who was being brought to a military prison in the United States, is the only suspect in a deadly rampage in southern Afghanistan. | 03/16/12 19:28:43 By - Jon Stephenson and Matthew Schofield
Sources: Suspect in Afghan killings identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales
A senior U.S. official says the soldier accused in the killing of 16 Afghan civilians is Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation into an incident that has roiled relations with Afghanistan. | 03/16/12 18:52:39 By -
Afghan massacre suspect had been at Lewis-McChord for 10 years
A Seattle attorney defending the Joint Base Lewis-McChord staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan described his client Thursday as a devoted husband and decorated soldier. | 03/16/12 07:06:08 By - Debbie Cafazzo and Adam Lynn
Taliban suspend talks with U.S.; Karzai calls for faster transition
The Taliban suspended negotiations with the United States on Thursday and Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on international troops to withdraw from villages in the latest apparent setbacks to U.S. policy in Afghanistan after an American soldier allegedly killed 16 villagers Sunday. | 03/15/12 10:20:58 By - By Ali Safi
Lewis-McChord could host Afghan massacre suspect's trial
The soldier suspected in Sunday’s killing spree in Afghanistan was flown out of Afghanistan Wednesday, the first major move in a legal process that will be closely watched around the world. There’s a fair chance he will be detained and tried at his home station of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, military law experts said. | 03/15/12 07:09:54 By - Christian Hill
Pentagon officials: 'No smoking gun' in Afghan rampage
As the Army staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 civilians was flown out of Afghanistan, two military officials told McClatchy on Wednesday that investigators combing his medical records had found "no smoking gun" to explain the rampage. | 03/14/12 19:31:38 By - Nancy A. Youssef and Matthew Schofield
As Panetta visits, explosions kill nine in Afghanistan
Eight civilians were killed on Wednesday when their vehicle was hit by a massive roadside bomb in the Marjah district of Helmand province, in Afghanistan, local officials said. | 03/14/12 11:04:53 By - By Jon Stephenson
Insurgents attack Afghan delegation near massacre site
A high-level Afghan delegation came under fire from suspected Taliban insurgents on Tuesday while visiting the site of Sunday's massacre of 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier. | 03/13/12 11:00:34 By - By Jon Stephenson
Lewis-McChord soldiers concerned about Afghan massacre fallout
Army Spc. Joshua Pinheiro dropped by a sewing shop Monday near Joint Base Lewis-McChord to get a name tag sewn on his rucksack. | 03/13/12 06:17:33 By - Christian Hill
U.S. soldier to be charged in Afghanistan massacre
Pentagon officials insisted Monday that the weekend's Afghanistan killing spree was an "isolated incident" and said that a 38-year-old Army staff sergeant would soon be charged in connection with the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children. | 03/12/12 18:43:22 By - Matthew Schofield and Nancy A. Youssef
Seeking new trade partners, Iran eyes Pakistan
Iran and Pakistan are negotiating a barter deal in which Pakistan would supply up to 22 million tons of wheat in return for discounted electricity and petroleum products, Pakistani business leaders involved in the talks said. | 03/12/12 15:20:16 By - Tom Hussain
U.S. soldier to be charged in Afghan shooting spree
A 38-year-old Army staff sergeant could be charged as early as today in the killings of 16 Afghan civilians in southern Kandahar province, a U.S. military official said Monday. | 03/12/12 11:08:15 By - By Nancy A. Youssef
U.S. soldier kills 16 Afghan civilians in unprovoked attack
A U.S. soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday, including three women and nine children, in an unprovoked attack in southern Kandahar province, Afghan officials said. | 03/11/12 21:59:26 By - By Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
U.S. soldier kills 16 Afghanistan civilians in unprovoked attack
A U.S. soldier killed 16 Afghan civilians, including three women and nine children, in an unprovoked attack in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Afghan officials said. | 03/11/12 15:33:55 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
U.S. agrees to hand over prisoners to Afghanistan
More than 3,000 detainees held by the U.S. military will be transferred to Afghan control within six months under an agreement signed Friday between the United States and Afghanistan. | 03/09/12 17:08:55 By - Jon Stephenson
Pakistani high court challenges spy agency over election payments
In a case that shines a harsh light on the interference in the country's politics of Pakistan's army and its premier spy agency, the Supreme Court on Friday heard an admission by a former spymaster that he distributed secret funds to opposition politicians in elections in 1990. | 03/09/12 15:40:45 By - Saeed Shah
Bin Laden widows charged as new probe describes discord in his home
Pakistani authorities said Thursday that they'd filed charges against Osama bin Laden's three widows as an investigation revealed fresh details of the dead al Qaida leader's family life in Pakistan — including suspicions by two of the women that the oldest wife would betray him. | 03/08/12 17:43:28 By - Saeed Shah
After a decade, Afghan forces don't trust Americans
Afghan soldiers and police say the recent burning of Qurans by U.S. personnel has seriously undermined their trust in their American counterparts, suggesting that the decade-long campaign to win hearts and minds has not only failed but also threatens the Obama administration's exit strategy. | 03/08/12 17:16:57 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Explosion kills 6 British troops in Afghanistan
Six British soldiers were believed to be killed when an explosion struck their armored vehicle, marking the biggest loss of life for British forces in Afghanistan in years, officials in London said Wednesday. | 03/07/12 18:10:56 By - Jon Stephenson
2 Afghans killed in bombing at base where U.S. soldiers burned Quran
Two Afghan civilians were killed and four wounded on Monday when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the entrance to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Base, where Qurans were burned by U.S. soldiers last month, local officials said. | 03/05/12 15:17:43 By - Ali Safi
5 U.S. soldiers responsible in Afghan Quran burnings
A Pentagon investigation has found five soldiers responsible for burning copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, which set off a spate of anti-American protests and violence across Afghanistan, two U.S. military officials said Friday. | 03/02/12 18:52:34 By - Nancy A. Youssef
Aid groups protest to CIA over bin Laden scheme
A leading coalition of American humanitarian aid groups has written to the CIA chief to protest the agency's use of a Pakistani doctor to help track Osama bin Laden, linking the ploy to a worsening polio crisis in Pakistan. | 03/02/12 17:44:57 By - Saeed Shah
2 more U.S. soldiers killed by Afghan partners
Afghans killed two American soldiers and wounded at least two others before dawn Thursday at a joint base in Kandahar province, in the latest deadly shooting of international forces by their Afghan partners, U.S. officials said. | 03/01/12 16:51:03 By - Jon Stephenson and Nancy A. Youssef
Violence suggests 'Afghans hate us, and we don't trust them'
As violence continued Monday in Afghanistan over the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. troops last week, American military officials and analysts are beginning to question whether the U.S. needs to change its mission of training Afghan soldiers and police, a key plank of President Barack Obama's withdrawal strategy. | 02/27/12 18:06:17 By - Nancy A. Youssef
Taliban claims responsibility for Jalalabad suicide attack
A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at the entrance to a joint Afghan-U.S. air base in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Monday, killing at least nine people, local officials said. | 02/27/12 09:13:12 By - Ali Safi
Two U.S. soldiers killed as Afghan protests continue; NATO withdraws advisers from ministries
The commander of the U.S.-led international force in Afghanistan on Saturday withdrew all NATO personnel from government ministries in and around Kabul after two U.S. soldiers were killed inside the Afghan Interior Ministry. | 02/25/12 11:07:48 By - Ali Safi and Jonathan S. Landay
New protests over U.S. burning of Qurans leave nine dead
Afghans took to the streets for a fourth day Friday to protest American mistreatment of the Quran in demonstrations that left at least nine people dead and thousands more expressing frustration that after 10 years of war, U.S. troops still don't understand how to handle a Muslim holy book. | 02/24/12 17:27:36 By - Ali Safi and Kate Tamba Howard
Obama apologizes for Quran burning as Afghan protests go on
President Barack Obama apologized Thursday for the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. forces in Afghanistan as anti-American protests raged for a third consecutive day, leaving two NATO troops and at least five Afghans dead and 26 Afghans wounded nationwide. | 02/23/12 17:04:08 By - Ali Safi and Jon Stephenson
9 die in 2nd day of Afghan protests over Quran burnings
At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded Wednesday in the second day of anti-American protests in Afghanistan after U.S. personnel burned Qurans and other Islamic material at Bagram air base, officials said. | 02/22/12 18:31:23 By - Ali Safi and Nancy A. Youssef
U.S. officials apologize after troops burn Qurans in Afghanistan
The commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday after reports that American troops at Bagram Air Base had accidentally burned hundreds of copies of the Quran, sparking outrage among Afghans. | 02/21/12 16:59:38 By - Ali Safi
Bomber at Afghan checkpoint kills girl when house collapses
A suicide car bomber killed an Afghan police officer and a young girl Monday in the restive southern city of Kandahar, local officials said. A second police officer and three civilians were wounded, said Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the governor's office. | 02/20/12 19:25:53 By - Ali Safi
Afghanistan stands by bidding process for Hajigak mine
Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines rejected allegations of problems in the bidding for one of the country's largest mines, calling it "a fair and transparent process." | 02/18/12 16:11:14 By - Jon Stephenson
Problems alleged with major Afghan mining deal
An Afghan-American company that failed to win a multibillion-dollar contract to develop one of Afghanistan's most lucrative mines alleges that the bidding process was riddled with irregularities and that the winning bidders may not be able to meet production targets. | 02/17/12 18:08:34 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
Angry Karzai confronts Pakistan's leaders over Taliban
An angry Afghan President Hamid Karzai confronted the Pakistani leadership Thursday, demanding that it produce Taliban officials for peace talks and underscoring the distrust between Kabul and Islamabad, which stands in the way of a deal to end the decade-long Afghan conflict. | 02/17/12 16:08:15 By - Saeed Shah
Insecurity impedes relief efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan
Western humanitarian groups have accelerated their plans to exit areas of Pakistan that were devastated in the 2010 floods after a spate of aid worker kidnappings and amid growing tensions with Pakistani security agencies. | 02/16/12 16:52:07 By - Tom Hussain
Pakistan still holding bin Laden family months after raid
The family of Osama bin Laden's youngest wife has asked the chief justice of Pakistan to order authorities to release her children and her and allow them to return to Yemen, nine months after the U.S. special forces raid that killed the al Qaida founder. Zakaria Ahmad al Sadah, brother of Amal al Sadah, bin Laden's Yemeni wife, said his sister's five children were in poor mental health and had received no schooling since they were taken into custody after the raid May 2. | 02/14/12 17:27:36 By - Saeed Shah
Stryker 'kill team' trials left some soldiers' families deeply in debt
At least the waiting is over. That's small consolation for friends and family of 12 Joint Base Lewis-McChord Stryker soldiers who spent much of the past two years ensnared in a sprawling war crimes investigation. | 02/13/12 08:41:42 By - Adam Ashton
Pakistan's ISI yields to Supreme Court, surrenders prisoners
The Pakistani Supreme Court on Monday forced authorities to produce seven men who had vanished from prison two years ago into the apparent custody of the military's main spy agency as the court continued to assert its authority against both the country's powerful army and its weak civilian government. | 02/13/12 06:20:54 By - Saeed Shah
In court's crosshairs, Pakistan's military refuses to produce prisoners
In a court battle testing the impunity long enjoyed by Pakistan's intelligence service, the Pakistani military said Thursday that it wouldn't bring forward seven men who were mysteriously kidnapped from prison in 2010 — allegedly by intelligence agents — because they were in extremely poor health. | 02/09/12 17:40:56 By - Saeed Shah
Deadly drone strike signals renewed U.S.-Pakistan cooperation
A U.S. drone strike reportedly killed a notorious Pakistani al Qaida operative before dawn Thursday in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, the latest sign that the United States and Pakistan are stepping up coordinated intelligence operations despite a downturn in relations. | 02/09/12 16:01:25 By - Tom Hussain
Mental problems plagued Afghan shooting suspect, his father says
The Afghan soldier suspected of killing four French troops last month had serious mental health problems and a history of violence, but he wasn't a Taliban insurgent, his father told McClatchy. | 02/08/12 16:58:27 By - Jon Stephenson
Afghan soldier forged papers, deserted army before killing French troops
The Afghan soldier who killed four French troops last month bribed an Afghan army recruiter to forge his enlistment papers, deserted to Pakistan and then bribed his way back into the army a month before the shootings, McClatchy has learned. | 02/03/12 15:29:59 By - Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi
White House scrambles to ease fallout from Panetta's Afghanistan comments
The Obama administration scrambled Thursday to tamp down the fallout out from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's surprise announcement that the United States would end its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected — a revelation that heightened confusion over U.S. strategy and stoked Afghan distrust of American intentions. | 02/02/12 19:35:44 By - Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef
Pakistan Supreme Court charges prime minister with contempt
Pakistan's prime minister will be charged with contempt of court and was ordered Thursday to appear in person before the Supreme Court on Feb. 13, in proceedings that could lead to him being jailed and disqualified from office. | 02/02/12 06:17:12 By - Saeed Shah
Unit leader among Marines who urinated on corpses
One of the Marines shown urinating on three corpses in Afghanistan in a widely distributed Internet video was the unit's leader, two U.S. military officials have told McClatchy, raising concerns that poor command standards contributed to an incident that may have damaged the U.S. war effort. | 02/01/12 17:59:00 By - Nancy A. Youssef
U.S. combat in Afghanistan will end next year, Panetta says
The U.S. military plans to change the focus of its Afghanistan mission from combat to training local forces by the end of 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday, apparently accelerating the timeline for Afghan forces to take over security responsibilities from NATO troops. | 02/01/12 19:16:16 By - Nancy A. Youssef
French decision to accelerate exit causes some Afghans to question NATO
The announcement by France last week that it would speed up the exit of its troops from Afghanistan has been greeted with a mixture of cynicism, disbelief and concern by politicians here. | 01/31/12 16:25:08 By - Jon Stephenson
Iran now may support attacks in U.S., official says
The losses of Osama bin Laden and other key figures have seriously degraded the core al Qaida organization's ability to mount major strikes and continued "robust" U.S. counter-terrorism efforts could reduce the group to only symbolic importance, the top U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday. | 01/31/12 10:00:11 By - Jonathan S. Landay
Parties campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas despite fears of Taliban
For the first time ever, political parties have started campaigning for votes in the militant-infested tribal areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan, ahead of a general election likely within the next 12 months. | 01/30/12 15:58:42 By - Tom Hussain
U.S. defense chief confirms Pakistan holds doctor with role in bin Laden raid
A senior American official has for the first time admitted that a Pakistani doctor played a key role in tracking Osama bin Laden to his hideout in northern Pakistan and called for his release. | 01/29/12 14:28:05 By - Saeed Shah
U.S. lawmakers' meeting sets back Obama's Afghan agenda
The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan had planned to use his latest foray to the region to build Afghan government support for the nascent U.S. effort to kindle peace talks with the Taliban. Instead, Ambassador Marc Grossman found himself last week putting out a fire ignited by a meeting between four U.S. Congress members and Afghan opposition leaders in Germany | 01/27/12 19:06:13 By - Jonathan S. Landay
Attack on NATO convoy kills 4 civilians in Afghanistan
A suicide car bomber killed four Afghan civilians and wounded dozens Thursday in the southern province of Helmand, local officials said. | 01/26/12 13:27:11 By - Ali Safi
Pakistan's Gilani, Kayani make nice, easing fears of coup
Fears that Pakistan's military might orchestrate a collapse of the civilian government abated Wednesday after the prime minister and army chief publicly signaled that they'd reconciled their political differences. | 01/25/12 19:08:17 By - Tom Hussain
Al Qaida still holding American contractor hostage in Pakistan
A kidnapped 70-year-old American aid contractor is alive and in good health, being held by a Pakistani al Qaida affiliate that's likely to use him as a bargaining chip, according to militants, security officials and analysts. | 01/25/12 16:02:18 By - Tom Hussain
Jack Idema, jailed for torturing Afghans, reportedly dies in Mexico
Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema, the con man extraordinaire from Fayetteville who spent years in an Afghan prison for running a private jail and torture chamber while claiming to be a secret Pentagon operative, has reportedly died in Mexico. | 01/25/12 12:07:59 By - Jay Price
Mansoor Ijaz won't come to Pakistan, a blow to Memogate case
The American businessman at the heart of the explosive "memogate" political scandal will not come to Pakistan to testify, blaming concerns for his own safety, his lawyer admitted Monday. | 01/23/12 06:24:38 By - Saeed Shah
Afghanistan's Karzai met with insurgents' peace delegation
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he recently met with a peace delegation from an insurgent faction of the Islamic nationalist group Hezb-i-Islami that he hoped would have "productive results." | 01/21/12 15:22:00 By - Ali Safi
French troop deaths spark worry over Afghan training mission
The killings of four French troops Friday by an Afghan soldier they were training has renewed concerns — a decade into the training mission — that Afghans are growing increasingly disdainful of the U.S.-led coalition forces ostensibly there to help them and are striking back. | 01/20/12 18:56:36 By - Nancy A. Youssef and Ali Safi
Bombings in southern Afghanistan leave 20 dead
At least 20 people have been killed in suicide attacks in southern Afghanistan, authorities said Thursday, including seven civilians who died when a bomber blew himself up near an airport used by the U.S.-led coalition. | 01/19/12 15:44:00 By - Ali Safi
Pakistan's Gilani says he won't pursue case against Zardari
Extending a battle of wills between Pakistan's government and its judiciary, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told the Supreme Court on Thursday that he wouldn't bow to a court order targeting the country's president. | 01/19/12 07:04:14 By - Saeed Shah
Report on shooting spree finds deep mistrust between U.S., Afghan forces
An Air Force investigation into a shooting spree by an Afghan colonel that left nine U.S. military trainers dead last year found high levels of hostility between Afghan and American forces and major Afghan support for the shooter. | 01/17/12 19:02:54 By - Nancy A. Youssef
Analysts: U.S., Pakistan collaborating again on drone strikes
Two apparent U.S. drone attacks last week on militant targets in Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan very likely signal the resumption of joint counterintelligence operations by the CIA and Pakistan's military spy agency, security analysts here said Monday. | 01/16/12 15:55:38 By - Tom Hussain
Pakistani Supreme Court threatens Gilani with contempt charge
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was threatened Monday with jail for contempt of court and ordered to appear before the Supreme Court in person, with any conviction on the charge leading to him possibly being disqualified from office. | 01/16/12 07:10:55 By - Saeed Shah
Critical week ahead for Pakistan's besieged government
Pakistan's political crisis, which pits its president against determined foes in the country's parliament, Supreme Court and military, is likely to reach fever pitch on Monday with a confidence vote scheduled in parliament and hearings scheduled in two critical court cases. | 01/15/12 18:48:49 By - Saeed Shah
Video of Marines urinating on bodies no surprise, Afghans say
The Pentagon scrambled Thursday to assure Afghans that it would aggressively investigate a video that shows U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three Afghans, while Afghans' reaction varied from outrage to resignation that the video merely reflected behavior that they think is typical of American troops. | 01/12/12 19:16:26 By - Nancy A. Youssef
Mansoor Ijaz says he'll testify in Pakistan's Memogate scandal
The controversial American businessman at the center of the legal case that threatens to bring down the Pakistani government vowed Thursday to fly to Islamabad and tell the court the "unaltered truth" in the so-called Memogate scandal. | 01/12/12 17:50:01 By - Saeed Shah
Intelligence report: Taliban still hope to rule Afghanistan
A new top-secret U.S. intelligence assessment warns that Taliban leaders haven't abandoned their goal of reclaiming power and reimposing harsh Islamic rule on Afghanistan, raising doubts about the success of any peace deal that the Obama administration tries to broker between Kabul and the insurgents. | 01/11/12 16:38:11 By - Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef
Confrontation between Pakistan's army, government sparks coup concerns
The confrontation between Pakistan's civilian government and its powerful army escalated sharply Wednesday when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani fired the defense secretary and the military warned that remarks by Gilani this week had "potentially grievous consequences." | 01/11/12 10:07:13 By - Saeed Shah
Pakistan speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying U.S.
With a decision to fast-track the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Iran, Pakistan is underscoring not only the energy needs of its flailing economy but also its growing estrangement from Washington. | 01/10/12 17:32:12 By - Tom Hussain
Pakistan's President Zardari fights back at moves to oust him
The Pakistani government has mounted a counterattack against moves by the country's military and Supreme Court that could result in what critics call a constitutional coup against President Asif Ali Zardari. | 01/05/12 16:45:56 By - Tom Hussain
Power struggle could further destabilize Pakistan
Pakistan's powerful army wants President Asif Ali Zardari gone, but it has ruled out staging a coup, and instead is hoping for a legal ruling that could lead to Zardari's impeachment by the country's parliament, analysts and military insiders say. | 12/30/11 18:15:27 By - Tom Hussain
Pakistan's military rejects Pentagon findings, denies coup plot
Pakistan's military on Friday ratcheted up tensions with the U.S., rejecting the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the friendly fire deaths of 25 Pakistani soldiers. The rejection came amid increasing political instability in Pakistan over allegations that the president, Asif Zardari, had in May sought American assistance to avert a military takeover. | 12/23/11 17:49:19 By - Tom Hussain
U.S. says both sides erred in deadly Pakistani border incident
A U.S. military investigation has blamed poor coordination between American and Pakistani forces for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a friendly fire incident along the Afghanistan border in November, the Pentagon said Thursday. | 12/22/11 17:53:29 By - Tom Hussain
Latest crisis tests survival skills of Pakistan's President Zardari
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has confounded predictions of his downfall throughout his term in office, but even as the U.S. ally unexpectedly returned to the country this week, many still believe that his demise is close at hand. | 12/21/11 09:05:18 By - Saeed Shah
Angry Pakistan to impose tax on NATO military supplies
Pakistan is planning to tax supplies for U.S.-led coalition troops that are shipped through its territory to land-locked Afghanistan, officials revealed, in retaliation for the recent deaths of its soldiers in a "friendly fire" incident on the border. | 12/14/11 18:22:15 By - Saeed Shah
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SPECIAL REPORT: AFGHAN CONTRACTS
The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to build facilities for Afghanistan's expanding national police and new garrisons for its army. The program, like much of the wider Afghan reconstruction effort, is faltering.
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