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| Sep 10, 2024 | National Politics | A look at false and misleading claims made during Trump and Harris’ debate | Only about $18 billion of that sum went toward equipping Afghan forces between 2002 and 2018, a June 2019 SIGAR report showed.
No one knows the exact value of the U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment the Taliban have secured, defense officials ha... |
| Apr 21, 2023 | U.S. taxpayers helping fund Afghanistan's Taliban? Aid workers say they're forced "to serve the Taliban first" | Aid workers at non-profit organizations in Afghanistan that receive financial support from the U.S. government say they're being forced to pay fees and provide services to the Taliban. They spoke to CBS News days after the head of a U.... |
| Feb 28, 2023 | The US military created an illusion of success in Afghanistan by handling tasks it was supposed to train Afghan troops to do, report says | Afghan National Army Special Operations Commandos stand in formation during a visit by Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Gen. Mohammad Yasin Zia and his command staff, in Camp Commando, Afghanistan, Wednesday, April 28, 2021. MARCU... |
| Oct 20, 2022 | History reveals how to get Ukraine reconstruction right: anti-corruption | While there is currently no clear end in sight to ongoing Russian military aggression against Ukraine, discussions are already active about Ukraine’s reconstruction. At the Lugano conference in July, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky u... |
| May 23, 2022 | The Lawfare Podcast: The Collapse of the Afghan Security Forces | The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known by its initials as SIGAR, released an interim report last week on the reasons for the collapse of the Afghan army. To break down the report’s findings, Bryce Klehm spoke wi... |
| Oct 6, 2021 | Afghan Arms Dealers are Now Selling Abandoned American Guns | In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the going price for a U.S. M4 carbine assault rifle is about $4,000 – especially if it comes fitted with an under-barrel grenade launcher or laser sight.
This is according to gun merchants in Kandahar, who... |
| Sep 5, 2021 | Five Myths About NATO and Afghanistan | Editor’s Note: “Who lost Afghanistan?” is a question with many answers. One being bruited about is that much of the fault lies with the NATO alliance, whose forces encountered many problems in Afghanistan. Sara Moller of Seton Hall Universi... |
| Sep 1, 2021 | Five Myths About the Taliban’s New Arsenal | As the Taliban swept across Afghanistan in the months after the U.S. withdrawal began in May, there were frequent reports of the group’s fighters capturing military equipment that had previously been supplied by the United States to Afghani... |
| Sep 1, 2021 | Former Afghan interpreter says ‘vast majority of Afghans’ view Taliban as ‘lesser of two evils’ compared to the US | A US soldier assigned to the Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 1st Armored Division watches as a UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter prepares to land during an advise and assistance mission in southeastern Afghanistan, August 4, 2019. Alejand... |
| Aug 1, 2021 | The Challenges of Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan | Editor’s Note: Who controls Afghanistan? The answer to this question is difficult to determine, and much depends on what is meant by control and how to consider its meaning in an Afghan context. CNA’s Jonathan Schroden assesses how and why ... |
| Jul 29, 2021 | The US was doomed in Afghanistan and will repeat mistakes if it doesn’t learn from them, top watchdog warns | President Joe Biden has said the US would complete its military withdrawal from Afghanistan by August 31, 2021. Scott Olson/Getty Images
The US is withdrawaing its troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of fighting there.
The US reconstruct... |
| Jul 27, 2021 | With the US gone, Afghanistan’s air force has to rely on Zoom calls to learn how to fix its aircraft | An Afghan air force maintainer works on an UH-60 Blackhawk at Kabul Airbase, May 9, 2021. MARCUS YAM/LOS ANGELES TIMES via Getty Images
The US is reducing its presence in Afghanistan, withdrawing its troops and contractors.
The US military ... |
| May 13, 2021 | America’s shadow army is leaving Afghanistan too | A US soldier and several contractors next to a MQ-1B Predator at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, January 3, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
Plans to withdraw the last US troops in Afghanistan by September include the thousands of US contractor... |
| May 7, 2021 | Afghanistan is being overrun by crystal meth as US begins withdrawal | A man in central Herat, in western Afghanistan. Aref Karimi for Insider
The US is leaving behind a flourishing, violent trade in heroin and crystal meth in Afghanistan.
The Om weed, which contains the key ingredient for making meth, grows w... |
| May 7, 2021 | Afghanistan is being overrun by crystal meth | The US is leaving behind a flourishing, violent trade in heroin and crystal meth in Afghanistan.
The Om weed, which contains the key ingredient for making meth, grows wild in the mountains.
One in 10 Afghans are said to be involved in the d... |
| Apr 9, 2021 | Biden has finally found a country the US can rebuild | A collapsed freeway overpass near downtown Oakland, California, in 2007. AP
The Biden administration has made an ambitious $2 trillion proposal to address the US’s infrastructure problems.
That influx of money would be welcome after two dec... |
| Mar 1, 2021 | Report: The U.S. Wasted Billions Of Dollars On Buildings And Vehicles In Afghanistan [Infographic] | The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, has reported that the U.S. has wasted billions of dollars on capital assets such as buildings, vehicles and aircraft in Afghanistan. SIGAR is the agency responsible for... |
| Dec 20, 2020 | Afghanistan Will Be the Biden Administration’s First Foreign Policy Crisis | Editor’s Note: The U.S. war in Afghanistan will continue under its fourth president, but it will not be the same war President-elect Joe Biden dealt with during his time as vice president. The situation on the ground may be even worse, but ... |
| Nov 18, 2020 | Where’s the U.S. Strategy for Counternarcotics in Afghanistan? | Back in September, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing examining the Trump administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, and David Helvey, the official p... |
| Jun 15, 2020 | Will the United States Really Go to Zero Troops in Afghanistan? | In the final U.S. presidential debate of 2016, candidate Donald Trump sharply criticized his opponent Hillary Clinton on the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Specifically, he claimed that by withdrawing all U.S. forces from ... |
| Jan 21, 2020 | The Afghanistan Papers and the Perils of Historical Analogy | On Dec. 9, 2019, the Washington Post released to great fanfare what it presumably hoped would be a bombshell along the lines of the New York Times’s explosive “Pentagon Papers,” published in 1971, and indeed framed the coverage as such. The... |
| Jan 21, 2020 | The SIGAR Called Congress to Action, But How Will It Respond? | When John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), testified on Jan. 15 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, he offered a sobering portrait of the challenges ... |
| Dec 17, 2019 | Canada’s Attorney General Blocks Disclosure of Evidence in National Security Case | Canada’s Attorney General Blocks Disclosure of Evidence in National Security Case
Last month, Canadian Attorney General David Lametti issued a security certificate in the ongoing case of R. v. Qing (Quentin) Huang. This is the first time th... |
| Apr 21, 2019 | One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Unintended Consequences of U.S.-Taliban Talks | Editor’s Note: Americans are weary of the war in Afghanistan, and peace talks between the United States and the Taliban are raising hopes that this forever war might finally end. Jessie Durrett, a graduate student at Princeton University, a... |
| Feb 7, 2018 | Why the United States Won't Do 'Governance' | Governance is one of the most important foreign policy challenges—and among the most difficult. Poor governance is linked to civil wars, corruption and a lack of economic development, among other grave problems. To its credit, the Trump adm... |
| Nov 19, 2017 | The Art of Dealing with the Taliban | Editor’s Note: As the Trump administration weighs its options in Afghanistan, one of the biggest questions is whether to continue talks with the Taliban via its office in Doha—an office set up with strong U.S. support. Here the president�... |
| Jan 3, 2016 | Djibouti’s First, But Will it Last? | Editor's Note: The United States has long depended on a worldwide network of military bases to project power, reassure allies, contain enemies, and fight terrorism. Indeed, as the Islamic State has metastasized, the Pentagon is conside... |
| Jul 5, 2015 | Afghanistan After the Drawdown | Editor’s Note: Afghanistan was once the poster child for the war on terrorism but, almost 15 years after the fall of the Taliban, many Americans see it as yet another failed intervention in the greater Middle East. However, Stephen Watts an... |
| Mar 24, 2015 | US and Afghan Leaders Discuss Troop Withdrawals as Violence Flares Again | US President Barack Obama will meet with Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani today to discuss the pace of American troop withdrawals from the troubled country, amid reports of fresh violence and a American drone stroke on militants in the region.
Th... |
| Nov 23, 2014 | Suicide Bomber Kills At Least 45 At Crowded Volleyball Match in Afghanistan | A suicide bomber killed scores of people at a packed volleyball tournament in Afghanistan on Sunday, officials confirmed. With at least 45 fatalities, it is one of the deadliest attacks so far this year in the country.
The bombing coincided... |
| Oct 24, 2014 | America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies' | If there’s anything our government can do well, it’s take a word loaded with tension and abuse it to the point of abstraction. First, we had “war.” The word described the hellish events of the First and Second World War, along with armed, b... |
| Oct 20, 2014 | US Air Force Asked Why It Scrapped $390 Million Worth of Transport Planes in Afghanistan | The United States let 16 military transport planes worth $24.3 million apiece sit idle on the tarmac at Kabul International Airport for more than a year before demolishing them and selling the scrap metal to an Afghan construction company f... |
| Jul 28, 2014 | The US Might Have Lost a Heap of Weapons in Afghanistan | The inventories for more than 465,000 small weapons — including rifles, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, and shotguns — that the US has shipped to Afghanistan in the past decade are a complete mess, and neither US officials nor the... |
| Jan 29, 2014 | Today's Headlines and Commentary | Last night, President Obama delivered his State of the Union Address. You can find the full video here. The speech focused on a strong call of action and a promise to go it alone if Congress doesn’t advance various policies. President Obama... |
| Oct 3, 2013 | Today's Headlines and Commentary | I'm sick of talking about the government shutdown---and it's nowhere near over yet. So let's skip ahead to other national security goings-on while we wait for our elected officials to grow up.
At yesterday's Senate Judic... |
| Sep 6, 2013 | Today's Headlines and Commentary | It's a little quieter on the Syria front today. A few items of interest before the weekend:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has filed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee resolution---which passed 10-7 earlier this week---on the Se... |
| Jan 18, 2013 | Today's Headlines and Commentary | The raid earlier this week on the Algerian natural gas facility is being tied to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian terrorist. His nicknames include “the Prince,” “the one-eyed,” and perhaps most frustratingly, “the Uncatchable.” Steven Erlang... |
| Jul 30, 2012 | Today's Headlines and Commentary | Rajiv Chandrasekaran over at the Washington Post has this breaking news on the just-released report by the inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. Read the full report here, previous reports to Congress here, the Post story here, ... |
| The Air Force released new videos of A-10 Warthogs striking Taliban drug labs — and it shows why the US strategy is a game of 'whack-a-mole' | DVIDS
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The US released two new videos of airstrikes on Taliban drug labs in Afghanistan.
The US is quietly escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has released a number of similar videos of strikes on Taliban drug facilities and tr... |
