TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
afghanistan
Battleland Diary, March 3-9
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Battleland Diary, Feb. 18-24
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Battleland Diary, Feb. 11-17
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Battleland Diary, Jan. 28-Feb. 03
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Battleland Diary, Jan. 21-27
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Battleland Diary, Jan. 7-13
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
Drones + Biometrics: Weapons That Conquer Globalization’s Frontiers
Cool NYT story on the US military’s use of biometrics (eye scans, etc.) to create unforgeable identification records of roughly one-in-five fighting-age Iraqi and Afghani males, creating databases that can be perused in seconds by a handheld device at a border crossing. Naturally, there is much interest and some desire to use the …
Why Obama’s Military Aid Cut is Unlikely to Change Pakistan’s Behavior
The Obama Administration clearly wants the American public to know it is not allowing Pakistan’s double game in Afghanistan and on militant jihadists to go unpunished: The New York Times reports that the U.S. is withholding some $800 million — one third of the aid designated for the Pakistani military — to send a message that …
Future grand strategists speak: Why US withdrawal from Afghanistan would stabilize Pakistan
In my continuing role as Head Judge for the online strategy community Wikistrat‘s month-long International Grand Strategy Competition featuring roughly 30 teams from top-flight universities and think tanks around the world, I get to peruse all manner of provocative thought from some of tomorrow’s best and brightest thinkers. And …
US bases in Afghanistan for decades?
Waiting on the Obama speech explaining this one.
Guardian piece Monday predicts that current US-Afghan talks will cement a very long-term deal on presence [hat tip to World Politics Review Media Roundup].
American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which
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The Winter Set Up: Counter-Insurgency in Kandahar
The fighting season in Afghanistan is in full swing, and the early reports indicate this one will be tough. After last year’s surge, American units, and the Afghan Army and police they’re partnered with, will be fighting to hold the areas they paid for dearly a year ago. One of the key provinces will be Kandahar.
In the months …
Kissinger on the sad strategic reality of US engagement in Afghanistan
Henry Kissinger had a sobering op-ed in the Washington Post Tuesday that laid out the reality of the US position in Afghanistan.
First, the fundamental conundrum of “nation building” in a fake state:
But nation-building ran up against the irony that the Afghan nation comes into being primarily in opposition to occupying forces.
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