The US Embassy in Kabul was the site of a sustained attack that resulted in six deaths and many more wounded. None of the deaths were from embassy personnel, the embassy reported. The BBC reports that the Haqqani network is responsible for the attack, according to the Kabul police chief. The Taliban has also taken [...]

Completely separate from the President’s announcement on troop withdrawals in Afghanistan, a major political crisis sparked in that country, suggesting that we have something less than a partner for stability. A political crisis erupted in the Afghan capital over the weekend after a special investigative court found that 62 legislators had won their seats by [...]

Richard Holbrooke died yesterday. The man was basically a shadow Secretary of State-in-waiting for the Bush era, a diplomatic fixer in the Clinton era (with the Dayton accords as his crowning achievement), a co-author of the Pentagon Papers and part of the Paris peace talks in the Vietnam era, and in the Obama era he [...]

Two upcoming National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan will say that the fight is not winnable without Pakistani engagement against Taliban militants on its side of the border. Incredibly, military commanders challenged the conclusions, saying that they don’t take into account alleged progress made this fall. This is part of a new phenomena in [...]

The President landed in Afghanistan today for an unannounced 3-hour visit. What’s interesting about it is that he tried, but failed, to meet Hamid Karzai face-to-face: Mr Obama is expected to speak to American troops and hold talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the conflict with Taliban insurgents [...] Mr Obama arrived at Bagram [...]

These are the kind of moments that a more secure, self-confident country would use to justify a mass pullout, and never go near Afghanistan again. For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent [...]

At the same time that the US and NATO are explicitly setting the end date in Afghanistan later and later into the decade, a new poll from Quinnipiac shows that public support for the war has completely collapsed. A majority of Americans now opposed continued involvement in Afghanistan. The ideological lines on this issue are [...]

The US will formally unveil a plan to NATO that would extend US involvement in Afghanistan through 2014. The transfer of security to the Afghans would begin over the next 18-24 months. This is predicated on the Afghans actually being able to create a security force that would take the lead against their homegrown insurgency. [...]

Dexter Filkins outlines a cruel to be kind approach the military has adopted in Afghanistan: Airstrikes on Taliban insurgents have risen sharply here over the past four months, the latest piece in what appears to be a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to [...]

This is a big hoocoodanode. Evidence is mounting that fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary election was so widespread that it could affect the results in a third of provinces, calling into question the credibility of a vote that was an important test of the American and Afghan effort to build a stable and legitimate government. [...]

The topline US reports on the Afghan parliamentary elections will strike a narrative flourish about ordinary citizens braving bomb threats and rocket attacks to reach the polls and perform their civic duty. You can bet that will be mirrored in the President’s statement on the elections later today. Remember the purple fingers? So let’s go [...]