Middle East, Wars | featured news

The Obama administration is trying to avoid a repeat of what happened in Iraq, where the United States was not fully prepared for the aftermath of a leader’s fall.

An unidentified attacker on Tuesday killed former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, whose main responsibility was negotiating a political end to the war with the Taliban.

American officials have blamed the bold attack on the U.S. Embassy on a Pakistan-based group allied with the Taliban.

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, a FRANCE 24 correspondent in Helmand province found that many Afghans had never heard of them – and have no idea why American troops are there.

U.S. soldiers deployed on the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan say the war isn't going away for another ten years, even after Washington pulls troops from a country locked in a deadly Islamist insurgency.

The Obama administration favors keeping a smaller military force in Iraq beyond this year than U.S. commanders believe is necessary, officials said Wednesday, although even a relatively tiny U.S. contingent may be too big for White House advisers who are worried about the slumping U.S. economy and the president's re-election chances....

Military officials in Pakistan announced the arrest of three men on Monday they said were senior Al Qaeda operatives who had been planning attacks on Western targets.

The United States must keep fighting the Taliban or risk more attacks like those of September 11, 2001, because the insurgent group is a ruthless enemy that has not cut ties to al Qaeda, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul said.

As much as $60 billion in U.S. tax dollars has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade due to lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and corruption, according to an independent panel....

Direct U.S. talks with the Taliban had evolved to a substantive negotiation before Afghan officials, nervous that the secret and independent talks would undercut President Hamid Karzai, scuttled them, Afghan and U.S. officials told The Associated Press....