Charles Recknagel is standards editor for RFE/RL.
A UN report that Afghanistan has one of the highest drug-use rates in the world gives a new and disturbing look at the grip opium and heroin hold on the country.
The Kyrgyz interim government often appears to be playing catch-up in the crisis in the south of the country. Will it be strong enough to take control of the situation now, despite its apparent lack of cohesion and unity?
The violence in Osh has once again put the focus on the Ferghana Valley as one of the potentially most explosive regions of the former Soviet Union. What makes it that way?
The new Iraqi parliament met on June 14 for less than 20 minutes before adjourning in admission of its inability to proceed immediately with forming a new government. What is holding up the process?
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is using his visit to China today to blast the newly passed UN sanctions upon his country. His speech comes as all major players in the Iran nuclear crisis now wrestle with how broadly to interpret the new sanctions in the months ahead.
The draft Iran sanctions proposal included a new element: targeting Iran's shipping industry. The move comes amid mounting evidence that Iran's state shipping company frequently changes the names of its vessels in order to conceal their transport of military-use goods to Iran.
Sixty-nine years ago today, at the height of World War II, more than 100 Iraqi Jews died in a pogrom in Baghdad. The events are now little remembered, but the ideology which spawned them -- a fusion of fascism and radical Islamism -- continues to fuel terrorist thinking today.
The Amu Darya, Central Asia's longest river, demarcates much of northern Afghanistan's border. But it is an unstable frontier that shifts as the river changes course, causing deadly land disputes.
As leaders of the 16 eurozone members meet in Brussels today to finalize Greece's rescue package, stocks and the euro continue to fall. What is the potential for the debt crisis to spread to other parts of Europe and the world?
Fear is rising in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar, where residents know NATO is planning an offensive to evict the Taliban.
The Iranian authorities have suspended two prominent opposition factions in a move that could dramatically alter the balance of power in the country.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has steadily ratcheted up his criticism of the international community in recent days. The remarks have received much attention in foreign capitals, but how are they seen in Kabul?
Iraq's Turkoman community is feeling new strength after last month's national parliamentary elections, as it could play a decisive role in the forming of a new government.
Attacks on the former Iranian president and his family are the latest measure of how deeply Iran's establishment has split over the Green Movement.
The official results from Iraq's parliamentary elections show former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya bloc won two more seats than current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law bloc. The neck-in-neck results suggest that a lengthy effort to form a new government is about to begin, with high-stakes deal-making that could severely test the country's newfound stability.
The results of Iraq's parliamentary elections could complicate Kurdish hopes of incorporating oil-rich area around the northern city of Kirkuk into their autonomous region.
This weekend's vote will say a lot about Iraq's stability just months before a planned U.S. troop drawdown.
As Iraqis prepare to go to the polls on March 7, there is much uncertainty over whether the election will raise or lower sectarian tensions. That uncertainty is due, in large part, to the efforts of one man -- the highly controversial Ahmad Chalabi.
Just two months ago, climate change dominated the news as the Copenhagen summit sought a new strategy against global warming. But after the summit's mixed results, the "Climategate" controversy, and the surprise resignation of the chief UN negotiator, the issue is mired in uncertainty.
The showdown between the Islamist-rooted ruling party and Turkey's old secularist order has dramatically escalated with the detention of over 50 current and former military commanders.
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