CSM reports on a RAND study by Ben Conable and Martin Libicki of 89 major insurgencies in the 20th century and early 21st, and what they might tell us about the likelihood of Obama succeeding in Afghanistan. Connable found that weak governments prevail militarily against insurgencies only 10 percent of the time. RAND’s own news […]
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Afghanistan
170 Killed in Afghanistan as Gates, Cheney, Palin Wrangle over Karzai
170 people were killed in Afghanistan during the past week in political violence, according to an interior ministry spokesman. Radio Azadi reports in Persian that the spokesman said Monday morning that there were 117 terrorist attacks in the country in the past week, quadruple the number in the previous week. The violence is placing in […]
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. […]
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.
Afghan Civilian Deaths_02
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 […]