The United States and Afghanistan have signed a deal to transfer all prisoners in the military-run prisons at Bagram Air Force Base to the control of the Afghans, a move that paves the way for a long-term security arrangement. The Strategic Partnership Agreement, which Washington and Kabul have been discussing for over a year, will [...]

Lindsey Graham was one of the more vocal critics of the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. He said that the Obama Administration “failed” by not being able to secure an agreement with the Iraqi government to allow troops to stay beyond the end of 2011. He added that “I fear this decision has set in [...]

The protests over the desecration of Korans in Afghanistan spread like wildfire today, and the Guardian reports at least seven deaths: Seven people have been killed in Afghanistan as violence spread across the country in a second day of protests against the burning of copies of the Qur’an by foreign troops. In Kabul an enraged [...]

Earlier I took a look at how negotiations in Afghanistan on a long-term military agreement were breaking down because of resistance to night raids by US forces and US-run prisons. Associated to that is the fact that Afghans and Pakistanis, like most people I assume, don’t particularly like it when you kill their citizens and [...]

The Administration has been negotiating for almost a year with the Afghan government over a post-2014 presence, after combat operations are handed over to the Afghans (this could come as early as the end of 2013). This is the second major negotiation with a foreign government over a continuing military presence that the Obama Administration [...]

Did you know that the federal government expects to spend $450 billion on fighting wars over the next decade? This, despite the removal of all troops fron Iraq, and the transition of combat missions over to the Afghans by 2014, if not a year earlier? That’s what we can take from the numbers in the [...]

It occurs to me that we cannot even really have a Pentagon Papers event in this country anymore. Sure, Wikileaks releases gained a decent amount of attention, but the real evidence for this comes in the past week. Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis wrote an 84-page report detailing his experiences in Afghanistan, which are at odds [...]

In the last two countries the United States invaded, Afghanistan and Iraq, officials subsequently set up parliamentary and not republican forms of government, with a unicameral Parliament rather than a bicameral legislature. Afghanistan does have a Presidential system and is thus somewhat closer to the US form of government, but the President in Iraq is [...]

At least so far, the attempts from inside the military to warn against an early withdrawal in Afghanistan are not working. In fact, the US appeared to move in the other direction today, aligning themselves more with France than with the military moles. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that NATO would shift from a combat [...]

A leaked NATO report suggests that the Pakistani security services are helping the Afghan Taliban in their insurgency program, and that even Afghan lawmakers want to sign up with the Taliban. The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC. The leaked [...]

The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has been misplaced. In fact, the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The number of detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, by contrast, has exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram – and shielded from any habeas proceedings [...]