Matthew Hoh, the highest-ranking foreign service officer to resign his post in Afghanistan, says he completely understands US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s move to privately speak out against an escalation of forces, given the corrupt central government in place in the country. Hoh, the former Marine Corps captain who served in a civilian capacity in eastern [...]

The National Security Council held a tense videoconference with Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador to Afghanistan who brought the policy to its knees yesterday with the leak of a series of cables from him to White House officials urging withdrawal. Eikenberry held his ground in the teleconference, and the President appears to have been moved [...]

It has been a consequential last 24 hours for the future of the US mission in Afghanistan. Karl Eikenberry, the current US Ambassador to the country, has dissented from the prevailing view that more troops are needed to secure the country, in a pair of secret cables. The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified [...]

The President is meeting again with his advisors about Afghanistan today. Despite what appears to be a rough consensus among military and some (but not all) civilian leadership to send at least 30,000 additional troops into the country, Obama has not signed off on the proposal and is seeking different options encompassing different goals, some [...]