via LobeLog
by Sumitha Narayanan Kutty
It has been a worrisome few weeks for Iran. The negotiations with world powers over its nuclear program are seeing significant differences, there is chaos in Iraq to Iran’s west, and more recently, the political transition in its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, hit a serious bump with allegations of [...]
via LobeLog
by Charles Naas
President Barack Obama and the United Nations have again warned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that, unless he signs a bilateral security agreement, which gives all foreign troops complete immunity from Afghan law, these troops will be withdrawn at the end of the year. To do so would leave the Afghan military, [...]
via LobeLog
by Tyler Cullis
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that January was the first month without a U.S. drone strikein the Pakistani tribal areas since 2011. The Washington Post argues that this is the result of a request from Pakistan’s government after ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, though some suggest [...]
via Lobe Log
Editor’s note: Mr. Naas is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served 4 years in Afghanistan during better times.
President Obama has announced that the United States will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Massive amounts of equipment are already en route back to bases in this country. [...]
via Lobe Log
The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:
A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present [...]
News and views on U.S.-Iran relations for October 25, 2010:
Commentary: Max Boot blogs that, in light of Hamid Karzai’s acknowledgment that he receives $2 million a year from Iran, “the Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try the same [...]
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington this week attempting to mend fences with the Obama administration, but Fouad Ajami, for one, isn’t buying it. In an interview released yesterday on the National Review website, Ajami — the neoconservative-aligned Middle East scholar best known as one of the intellectual godfathers of the Iraq [...]
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'Bags of money' from Iran to Karzai mean little
The media has been buzzing about the admission from both Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Iran that the latter passed the former bags of cash, apparently in euros.
The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who [...]