Word: afghan
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...During his annual foreign policy speech at London's Guildhall on Monday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown groped for a way to meet that aspiration by offering to host a conference involving NATO and the Afghan government in January to set out an Afghan exit strategy. The conference "should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and - if at all possible - set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010," he said. (See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan...
...Most exit strategies assume a more orderly withdrawal, in which NATO forces hand over control to Afghan authorities, whether district by district as Brown advocates or in larger increments. Yet the difficulties of training the notoriously volatile Afghan police force were highlighted by this month's Helmand checkpoint shooting (the dead soldiers had been mentoring the Afghan police) - and building up the Afghan army is only comparatively less problematic. A new report from the Berlin-based think tank SWP predicts that the Afghan National Army will reach its target level of 134,000 troops by 2011. But the report also...
...briefing of the sort that you're perhaps used to, carefully scripted and modulated, from people who are suggesting to you that more of the same is going to be fine?" he asked rhetorically, adding: "There is a sense of urgency throughout the defense community." (Read: "Obama's Afghan Dilemma: Missing Security Forces...
...That may sound distasteful to a public more used to rhetoric about eradicating the Taliban, not buying them off. But if any new consensus is emerging around the Afghan mission in Britain, it is that hopes of a military solution have long evaporated. "Our goal is not a fight to the death. It is to demonstrate clearly that [the Taliban] cannot win, and to provide a way back into their communities for those who are prepared to live peacefully," said Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, in an address to the NATO assembly the same day British defense chiefs launched...
...Afghan President Hamid Karzai took his oath of office for his second term Thursday, Nov. 19, in a stately inauguration ceremony at the presidential palace in Kabul, finally putting an end to a drawn-out election drama mired in accusations of fraud and corruption. Dressed in his trademark violet- and green-striped cloak and karakul hat, Karzai placed his right hand on the Koran and swore to the attending chief of the Supreme Court that he would uphold the constitution of Afghanistan and lead the country into peace and stability. One can only hope he keeps that promise...