Iran and Afghanistan

At the Global Affairs blog, Farideh Farhi weighs in on Iranian human rights activist Emadeddin Baghi. She suggests that "it also suggests a shift of approach by Ahmadinejad’s paranoid government from the harassment of well-known human rights activists to their arrest."

Barnett Rubin weighs in on reports of the Afghanistan government negotiating with the Taliban.

And check out David Morse on Sudan at Tomdispatch.com.

Also, Shahid Buttar on Musharraf and Pakistan.

See also Edwin Moise, Iraq Wars Bibliography-- a useful research tool.

Rubin: Proposal on Narcotics in Afghanistan

Barnett Rubin has just posted another entry in his brilliant series on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan.

Bush's Failures in Afghanistan

At our Global Affairs group blog, Barnett Rubin comments on an important new NYT article on how Afghanistan is going bad under W.'s tender ministrations. Rubin is perhaps our foremost Afghanistan expert and his trenchant and informed commentary is a must see.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, called Sunday for a formal investigation into reports that a US/NATO air strike on Taliban positions in a village last Friday killed 45 civilians. Karzai and NATO have decried the Taliban tactic of hiding among civilian villagers, but the mounting death toll this year of Afghan civilians being killed in NATO and US military actions has angered the public and forced Karzai to speak out in protest.

An Afghan human rights organization estimates that US and NATO air strikes this year killed more civilians than did the resurgent Taliban.

Video from Aljazeera English service via YouTube.