Business Insider: By the mid-1980s, the Soviet war in Afghanistan had reached something of a stalemate. To turn the tide, the US introduced Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to erode Soviet control of the air. In the years since, the Stingers and US policy in Afghanistan have become a headache, but CIA personnel involved in the Stinger program
Frud Bezhan Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty October 1, 2018 Sibghatullah Mojadedi, Mohammad Mohaqiq, and Mohammad Khan are among Afghanistan’s most prominent onetime hard-line Islamists. But the former warlords’ credentials have been questioned by some Afghans after they attended a celebration marking Chinese communism in Kabul. The three gray-bearded men, clad in traditional Afghan garb, were
New York Times: The bay windows in the Bost Hotel’s dining room looked out across the Helmand River. For all the river’s immensity, the current, borne hundreds of miles from up in the Hindu Kush, spoke only in whispers. The air hummed with mosquitoes. Beyond the river, on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the capital of
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan September 9, 2018 KABUL — A suicide bomber on a motorcycle has blown himself up near a procession in the Afghan capital commemorating the death of a revered resistance leader, killing at least seven people, officials say. Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai told RFE/RL that more than 20 people were wounded
Tolo News: Members of Afghanistan Green Trend, a Kabul-based social movement, on Friday commemorated Martyrs Week and the 17th anniversary of the National Hero Ahmad Shah Massoud’s assassination by laying a wreath at the Minaret of Resistance in Wazir Akbar Khan in Kabul’s PD15. Afghanistan Green Trend members called on people to commemorate Martyrs Week and Ahmad
Michael Hughes: New military commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Austin Miller on his first day on the job signaled that he would continue America’s stale strategy which itself is a recipe for perpetual conflict. However, there are some so-called strategists who have accomplished the impossible by concocting ideas even worse than the one that has
Tolo News: Today, Sunday, August 19, thousands of Afghans around the country will celebrate the 99th anniversary of Independence Day. This national holiday honors Shah Amanullah Khan’s defeat of the British Empire in 1919 and the founding of the nation. Click here to read more (external link).
Michael Hughes: Afghanistan for at least the fifth time in the past eight years has experienced a “Tet-like” offensive – that is, if you believe military pundits, scholars and reporters who often cannot resist historical analogies even if it comes at the expense of true clarity. This is not to say the siege of Ghazni
The Mighty: There is no greater historical example of an unstoppable force hitting an immovable object than the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a mountainous, landlocked, harsh country that makes it very difficult for a great power to bring the full might of that power to bear against the locals. Naval forces are
Eisa Ayoobi via The Globe Post: Ashraf Ghani and Zalmay Khalilzad have been the most influential Afghan-Americans to impact U.S.-Afghanistan relations over the decades. Their education and Washington-based experience have earned them rhetoric sway and a vastly influential network of friends. However, their ethnonationalism-aspired Afghanistan “vision” has cost the U.S. thousands of lives and “trillions of