Afghanistan

Think for a minute about the Wakhan Corridor.  You say you’ve never heard of the Wakhan Corridor?  Don’t feel bad, not many people have since it is one of the most remote places on Earth.  Look at a map of Afghanistan; see that long, skinny piece jutting out from the northeast corner reaching over to China, the thing that sort of resembles a giant splinter sticking in the flank of the country?  That is the Wakhan Corridor, a mere ten miles wide in some areas, it is a place that owes its existence to the geopolitical machinations of the 19^th century; created by the British

[Read part 1 here]      Focused first and foremost on consolidating his power, like any political leader facing an insecure environment (the same principle applies to North Korea, who seeks a nuclear deterrent to ensure regime survival), Karzai failed to make the needs of the Afghan people his priority, as reflected in the flawed loya jirga most recently.

Deciding Afghanistan's Stability Everywhere but Afghanistan

The peace and stability of Afghanistan, the subject of numerous international, regional and national consultations, consistently shuts out the Afghan people themselves, and the recent peace jirga (June 2-4) hosted by Hamid Karzai was no exception. This calls into question the validity of the Obama administration’s approach, on more levels than one.

As American politicians and pundits searched for lessons to be learned from September 11, the paucity of domestic experts knowledgeable about South Asia was noted as a weakness the U.S. government had to address urgently, by cultivating a cadre of diplomats and linguists.

Here's a viral hit thats getting major play on Youtube. The video is of a group of soldiers in Afghanistan dancing in get ups and doing their rendition of the Lady Gaga hit "Telephone." Though no one would mistaken these guys for setting the disco on fire, it's nice to see that they can still find the downtime to let loose.

On March 31, the United Nations and the United States will co-host a conference in New York in attempt to “lay the foundations for Haiti’s long term recovery.” It is vital that this platform is used to address the fact that the country has become too reliant on international NGOs to provide basic services to citizens.

One of the key initiatives that President Obama announced during the State of the Union address was a freeze on federal spending increases, and one key area of spending he made a point of exempting was the defense budget.   That reminded me of this essay on US military spending by the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow.  He does a fine job of listing the threats the United States faces in the world and our analyzing our ability to meet them, but one statistic jumped out at me: for 2010 the Pentagon budget will be roughly $700 billion, this, Bandow notes, is only a little more than the inf

The Supreme Court of Canada handed down its ruling Friday in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian child soldier who was captured by US forces in Afghanistan during a fire fight that left one US medical officer dead. Instead of being returned to Canadian authorities, Khadr, then only 15, was sent to Guantanamo Bay where he suffered interrogation and threats of torture.

When putting together my “Stories You May Have Missed in 09” post, I was surprised to see that two of the six news stories I highlighted involved Canada.  I suppose that I share the same conceit as many of my fellow Americans, we tend to view our neighbors to the north as just too familiar to really consider them a “foreign” country.  Our two lands share the longest de-militarized border in the world, we’ve been at peace for nearly two full centuries since the end of the War of 1812 – save for a little mid-19^th century