Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Mindful of the cloud of suspicion that remains over his administration following its return to power in flawed elections, Karzai in London reiterated his pledge to tackle Afghanistan's rampant corruption. At the summit, he announced the creation of an independent High Office of Oversight to investigate corrupt officials and the strengthening of other anticorruption bodies. "Fighting corruption will be the key focus of my second term of office," Karzai promised. "We are determined to put an end to the culture of impunity." (See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan...
...notable absence from the London summit was that of Iran, Afghanistan's influential neighbor on its western flank. "The approach of this conference is still towards increasing military actions in Afghanistan," an Iranian official told the official Fars news agency. Tehran's decision to stay away, said British Foreign Secretary and conference chairman David Miliband, was "inexplicable...
...That same adjective might seem to apply to the failure of the Afghan government to include in its delegation even one woman. When Orsana Ashraf, the founder of the nongovernmental organization Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, first heard about the London conference, she began to lobby officials to ask that women's views be properly represented. The response, she says: "They said this isn't ladies' business; this is about security...
...power-sharing deal to be negotiated with the movement's leaders if they cut ties with al-Qaeda. Such talk has Afghan women fearing that their own hard-won freedoms could be in jeopardy. "As we see the Taliban coming back, what will happen to the women of Afghanistan?" asked Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Centre, in a meeting in Westminster before the summit. That's one of a number of questions that could have cracked the smooth sheen of unanimity that glossed the outcome of Thursday's meeting. (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive...
...Cautious optimism also reigned after talks on Yemen hastily organized to take place alongside the Afghanistan conference, following the failed Christmas Day attack on a jetliner in Detroit. The Yemen meeting, on Jan. 27, set out steps to counter the growing threat from al-Qaeda militants based in the failing state, and envisaged a boost in aid from the U.S. and other nations. "We cannot afford inaction," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of that meeting. But the challenge remains to turn all this talk into action...