Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
Pro-Taliban militants should order a stop to violence and the abetting of foreign Al-Qaeda fighters. In return, government troops would be gradually withdrawn.
Hours before scenes of Saddam Hussein's statue being toppled transfixed the Western world five years ago, Arabs got word of the regime's collapse from a man wielding a shoe in Baghdad. He says he's still awaiting a return to normalcy.
France will send an additional battalion to eastern Afghanistan, spotlighting French participation in ISAF and in NATO. Will other allies follow?
Clashes between Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militia continue in the southern Iraqi port city of Al-Basrah -- the fourth day of fighting there since Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a government assault against Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Imam Al-Mahdi Army militia.
Officials in Kabul say the Afghan National Army soon will number 70,000 combat-ready soldiers -- the strongest the force has been since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
A public rift between Taliban leaders and Al-Qaeda supporters in the Arab world could hint at prospects for peace in Afghanistan. Disputes include whether to negotiate and the limits of foreign influence.
More Afghan parents appear to recognize that violence causes physical and psychological harm to children. A much smaller group still calls it "a good way of bringing up children."
Britain's Ministry of Defense has confirmed that Prince Harry is to be withdrawn from Afghanistan after news leaked that the third-in-line to the British throne has been secretly serving as a front-line combat soldier in Helmand Province for more than two months.
Azerbaijan's government has raised concerns with U.S. officials that militants from Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are expanding from northern Iraq into the Caucasus and could be setting up cells in Azerbaijan.
Afghanistan's top prosecutor accuses a powerful militia commander and presidential adviser of kidnapping and other crimes, but says a trial is unlikely.
When commander Mullah Mohammad Salaam defected to the side of the Afghan central government in December, he made international headlines. Now Salaam, in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL, is accusing the Taliban's supreme leader of violating "the teachings of the Koran and the orders of God."
Much of Afghanistan's cultural heritage has fallen victim to its recent war-torn past. But one expatriate's plans to bring his personal collection home and set up a series of museums are in jeopardy because of a dispute with the Culture Ministry.
Afghan authorities say they have discovered a weapons cache containing 130 different types of mines that appear to have been imported from Iran.
When U.S. Ambassador William Wood paid a visit, ex-Taliban commander and Musa Qala district chief Mullah Abdul Salaam had a list of requests: greater reconstruction efforts, more security, and assurances that corruption won't block government aid.
For years, Afghan officials including President Hamid Karzai have extended an olive branch to moderate Taliban to lay down their arms and back the government. But their overtures have been largely rejected -- until now.
The security situation in Baghdad and Iraq's vast Al-Anbar Governorate has improved markedly this year as a result of the U.S. military's troop increase and local Sunni tribal leaders' efforts against Al-Qaeda-linked militants. But a fresh wave of violence north of Baghdad could indicate that Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants are changing their tactics.
Afghan government troops and NATO forces are patrolling the southern town of Musa Qala today after driving out Taliban fighters who had been entrenched there for 10 months. But even as the troops searched for booby traps and stranded militants, the Afghan Defense Ministry said hundreds of Taliban had launched a counterattack in the nearby district of Sangin -- an area that includes a road project linked to the reconstruction of the strategic Kajaki hydroelectric dam.
December 7, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- NATO-led forces and Afghan government troops in southern Afghanistan have launched a joint offensive aimed at seizing a town that has been controlled by Taliban militants for the past 10 months.
A year ago, NATO boasted that Taliban fighters had been driven from a volatile part of southern Afghanistan to allow for the reconstruction of the strategic Kajaki hydroelectric dam. But the Taliban returned to make the dam emblematic of the country's security and development problems in 2007.
(RFE/RL) November 24, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan has awarded a state-owned company in China with the right to develop a large copper field to the south of Kabul, following two years of bidding.
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