Afghanistan and Pakistan face decisive year
Ahmed Rashid People in the South Asia region will be holding their breath in the new year. If both nations fail to achieve a modicum of political stability and success against...
A Deadline We Can Believe In?: Advantage: Taliban
Ahmed Rashid While President Obama deliberated three months before releasing his new Afghan surge strategy, his decision actually muddied the waters as far as American credibility in Afghanistan and Pakistan...
On The Afghan-Tajik Border, Villagers Are The Drug Lords’ Pawns
Zarif Nazar and Charles Recknagel In many parts of Afghanistan, living near the border brings advantages. Villagers can earn money from the cross-border trade as merchants or as carriers. Even...
Blair and Bush Must Take a Long Hard Look At Pakistan
Ahmed Rashid Here is the real dilemma faced by the Western alliance in its continuing war against terrorism. Pakistan's military dictator, General Pervaiz Musharraf, has been responsible for the...
Appeasing West and Militants Has Failed
Ahmed Rashid President Pervez Musharraf again finds himself in the eye of the storm. Al-Qa'eda is baying for his blood as a result of the carnage inside the Red...
The Scary Unraveling of Pakistan
Ahmed Rashid As Obama announces an aggressive counter terror campaign in Afghanistan, the region’s most dangerous nation—Pakistan—gets more grim by the day. Ahmed Rashid on President Zardari’s loss of control. In...
Al-Qaeda’s Followers Have Managed To Stay One Step Ahead Of Their Pursuers
Ahmed Rashid There was no warning of the bombings in London. The British intelligence service MI5 did not pick up any proverbial chatter, as usually talkative terrorists discuss the last...
Prerelease: Ahmed Rashid Takes On the Crisis in AfPak
Ahmed Rashid IN AFGHANISTAN: a war going in the wrong direction, a fatally flawed election, reconstruction at a standstill and a growing political vacuum that the Taliban is filling...
A Distraction from Washington’s Grand Design
Ahmed Rashid Nawaz Sharif is not part of the American script for the war on terror and the future of Pakistan, written by mandarins in the US State Department....
Bridging a gap for India and Pakistan
Ahmed Rashid Visits from three senior U.S. officials in three weeks indicate troubles in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. Washington has failed to deliver on the regional strategy it promised this spring,...
Why I like the Afghan timetable
Francis Fukuyama I am probably the only person in the United States who actually likes the fact that President Obama set an 18 month timetable for the beginning of a...
Russia: Moscow Embraces New Initiative To Forge Post-Soviet Trade Bloc
Sergei Blagov Russia wants to turn a newly minted Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan into its major vehicle for post-Soviet economic integration in Central Eurasia. Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed...
Pakistan’s conspiracy theories stifle debate
Ahmed Rashid Switch on any of the dozens of satellite news channels now available in Pakistan. You will be bombarded with talk show hosts who are mostly obsessed...
Afghan Election Officials Cancel Runoff, Declare Karzai Winner
Sean Maroney Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission says it has canceled the presidential runoff, originally scheduled for this Saturday. The announcement came a day after President Hamid Karzai's challenger, former foreign...
Pakistan denies drone attack report
The military said that the explosion in Bajaur was caused by a vehicle packed with explosives [AFP] Pakistan's military has denied that a US drone attack was behind the deaths of as...