Afghanistan's deteriorating security situation has led to further postponement of the presidential and parliamentary elections. Initially scheduled for June 2004 (when President Hamid Karzai's term of office expired), both sets of elections were postponed to September, as officially announced during the June NATO summit in... MORE

Trade and economic relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to be improving, despite the recent history of mutual suspicion between the Northern Alliance-dominated government in Kabul and Islamabad's past support of the Taliban regime, which U.S. forces and the Northern Alliance toppled in December 2001.... MORE

The official announcement on July 9 to postpone the Afghan presidential elections from September to October and the parliamentary elections from September to April or May of 2005 comes as no surprise. Analysts following events on the ground in Afghanistan knew many weeks ago that... MORE

Historical, cultural, and linguistic links between Afghanistan and Iran have always encouraged close ties between the two countries. Frequent and close contacts continued between the two states until the Taliban came to power, ruling from 1996 to 2001. When the Taliban regime was deposed by... MORE

At the June 28-29 NATO summit in Istanbul, both Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush appealed for NATO to immediately deploy more NATO troops in Afghanistan to boost security for the upcoming September elections. The requests largely fell on deaf ears.... MORE

The latest surge of violence against poll workers and other civilians in Afghanistan's eastern and southwestern provinces killed at least 18 people and left more than 13 injured, some seriously. President Hamid Karzai, U.S. Ambassador Zalmai Khalilzad, UN Special Envoy Jean Arnault, and the coalition... MORE

President Hamid Karzai's recent visit to the United States highlighted recent progress toward reconstructing Afghanistan. On the economic front, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of South Asian Affairs noted on June 15 that Afghanistan's "legal" economy grew at a rate of almost 30% in 2002... MORE

Suffering from two decades of civil war and five years of drought, Afghanistan's infrastructure was in shambles when the United States and coalition forces overthrew the Taliban regime in December 2001. The top national priority was keeping the country united in the face of the... MORE

There are fears that tribal insurgency in South Waziristan is connected to wider terrorist activity elsewhere in Pakistan. The June 17 killing of pro-Taliban tribal leader Nek Mohammad, presumably with US technical help, has added more fuel to the fire of extremist Islamic militancy in... MORE

On June 17, Chaghcharan, the capital of Ghor province in northwestern Afghanistan fell to the hands of a renegade commander Abdul Salam. The governor appointed by the central government has fled for his life. This is the third time in as many months that an... MORE