Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
In 2002, Pakistan launched a plan to eliminate the teaching of extremist views in Islamic schools called madrassahs. While the vast majority of the religious schools appear to be participating in the reform program, reports indicate that little has changed at the most radical madrassahs.
There are growing international concerns that presidential elections scheduled for June in Afghanistan may be delayed. RFE/RL spoke about those concerns with Barnett Rubin, a leading U.S. scholar on Afghanistan who helped draft the Bonn Agreement on post-Taliban transformation. Rubin is the director of the Center for Preventive Action at New York University.
India and Pakistan today began three days of talks focusing on nuclear security and their half-century dispute over Kashmir.
The 15th anniversary of the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops from Afghanistan takes place on 15 February. RFE/RL spoke with Afghan experts about the legacy of the Soviet withdrawal and the lessons in those events for both the international community and Afghan citizens.
Researchers at Human Rights Watch today released a report on how Central and Eastern European countries continue to export weapons, or serve as transit points in arms deals, to governments with poor human-rights records. Although the report focuses on case studies in Slovakia, author Lisa Misol says the findings are relevant to other countries that hope to join the European Union and NATO in May.
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program has signed a confession in which he admits transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Islamabad continues to insist that neither Pakistan's government nor its military authorized the transfers. But experts say Khan's confession has not allayed suspicions that Pakistani officials may knowingly have allowed nuclear technology to be traded abroad.
Tehran, 1 February 2004 (RFE/RL) -- More than one-third of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, resigned today to protest a decision by conservative Islamic hard-liners to disqualify reformists from competing in upcoming elections.
Security has been tightened in Kabul after two suicide bomb attacks in as many days killed a soldier from Canada and another from Britain. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz reports that the attacks are raising questions about who could be behind them and how they could affect presidential elections scheduled for this summer.
A dispute over whether female Afghan singers should be shown on Kabul TV has focused attention on divisions between conservative Islamists and moderates in the Afghan government.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that deposed President Saddam Hussein's regime might not have possessed any banned weapons at the time the U.S.-led coalition launched its war in Iraq last year. Powell's remarks come after David Kay, the retiring chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he thinks Iraq probably got rid of its chemical and biological weapons after the first Gulf War.
A powerful militia commander in northern Afghanistan has given a rare press conference in which he defends the refusal of some of his militia fighters to disarm. The former Afghan deputy defense minister, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, also has proposed that he head an antiterrorism force of some 20,000 commandos that would fall under the authority of the president rather than the Defense Ministry.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan are denying claims by local Afghan officials that a recent airstrike killed 11 civilians in the southern province of Oruzgan. And they are rejecting accusations that poor intelligence and indiscriminate shooting may have led U.S. forces to kill women and children.
Pakistan's government denies that it authorized transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. But under international pressure, it is promising to question individuals from its nuclear weapons program. RFE/RL speaks with international experts about why there are growing suspicions that someone in Pakistan did provide those countries with nuclear technology.
The Danish army says laboratory tests carried out on recently discovered Iraqi mortar shells have ended suspicions that the ordnance contained a chemical agent.
A top expert on the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism, author and journalist Ahmed Rashid, says Pakistan's military operations near the Afghan border appear to be the result of enormous international pressure on Islamabad to capture Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But the hunt is complicated by domestic politics and tribal law in Pakistan
Kabul TV has shown the image of a woman singing a romantic ballad for the first time in more than 10 years. RFE/RL reports on the reactions.
Pakistani Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali is in Kabul today for his first official visit to Afghanistan. The trip comes as Pakistan continues a military operation in its autonomous tribal regions near its border with Afghanistan aimed at capturing Islamic militants.
Prague, 12 January 2004 (RFE/RL) -- British military officials are investigating why a demonstration over unemployment in southern Iraq turned violent on 10 January, leaving at least five protesters dead.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad concluded a three-day visit to Turkey today that contributed to a growing rapprochement between the two countries.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned the Security Council that violence could jeopardize Afghanistan's crucial presidential election scheduled for midyear.
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