Middle East, Wars | featured news

It was a harrowing international debut for Chuck Hagel, whose first trip to Afghanistan as U.S. defense secretary went dramatically off-script and challenged the American narrative about the 11-year-old war.

Syria and Iran on Saturday condemned a move by the United States to give non-lethal aid to rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accusing Washington of double standards.

The United States said on Thursday that it would provide an additional $60 million in non-lethal assistance to help the Syrian opposition provide basic services in areas they control.

In a policy shift, the United States is planning to channel aid directly to selected groups of the Syrian opposition, senior White House officials told NBC News.

More than five hundred men marched through the capital of Afghanistan's restive Wardak province on Tuesday in an outburst of anger against U.S. special forces accused of overseeing torture and killings in the area.

A German official is saying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has told NATO allies that the U.S. will leave between 8,000-12,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, when combat ends.

Just when they expected a flood of heavy weapons to help them make a major push against the forces of President Bashar Assad, rebel commanders in Syria say, arms shipments from outside the country have instead slowed, prolonging a conflict now nearing the end of its second year.

Civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan dropped in 2012 for the first time in six years, a sign of lessening hostilities, but insurgents dramatically expanded their campaign of assassinating government supporters, the United Nations said Tuesday.

President Barack Obama will announce in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that 34,000 troops will return from Afghanistan by early 2014, a source familiar with the speech told Reuters.

President Obama awarded the nation's highest military honor Monday to a U.S. soldier who led a counterattack in Afghanistan after he and his comrades were asked to "defend the indefensible."