Somebody hacked a Taliban website. Big surprise. Actually, no surprise. No surprise that the Taliban and other terrorists groups are online. When the issues of terrorism and the Internet are joined in one conversation, most people talk about the threat of cyberterrorism. But the reality is that terrorists mostly use …
In the wake of a U.S. Army staff sergeant’s murdering 16 Afghan civilians (mostly women and children), U.S. officials are contemplating the pace and scope of the U.S. troop drawdown from the country. At the same time, they are seeking a negotiated settlement with the Taliban leadership. U.S. and NATO …
In a secret NATO report recently leaked to the British media, Taliban insurgents told their interrogators that they are increasingly confident that the Taliban will retake power once NATO forces depart Afghanistan, and that Pakistan is positioning itself for such an outcome. NATO officials have sought to downplay the report’s …
During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama largely glossed over the ongoing war in Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 American soldiers are fighting to prevent the reemergence of a terrorist safe haven in the region. He did, however, deliver a misleading statement on the subject in declaring that …
The British newspaper The Guardian has reported that the U.S. has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office in Qatar. If true, this would demonstrate that the Obama Administration is dangerously naïve about the …
On a Saturday in late October in Kabul, Afghanistan, a car carrying explosives rammed into an armored U.S. military bus, killing 13 Americans, including five soldiers and eight civilian staff. In August, a Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans. Who was responsible? The Taliban. And who …
Vague platitudes, rather than meaningful solutions, dominated last week’s international conference on Afghanistan held in Turkey’s capital, Istanbul. Conference participants, including Pakistan, Iran, India, China, and Russia, broadly affirmed their support for the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Afghanistan. But for countries like Pakistan that continue to support Afghan …