Charles Recknagel is standards editor for RFE/RL.
For eight years since the U.S.-aided toppling of the Taliban, the residents of the Qala-i-Zal district of Konduz Province have relied on Afghan government forces for security. Now, with a resurgent Taliban, worried local officials have taken matters into their own hands.
Deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith was dismissed from his mission earlier this month after accusing the top envoy there, Kai Eide, of concealing information about the extent of fraud in the country’s contested election. In a new twist, Galbraith himself is now at the center of a new apparent scandal. A Norwegian newspaper reported that Galbraith acquired shares in an Iraqi Kurdish oil field at a time when he was a leading diplomatic voice in the U.S. debate over the structure of post
Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region has stopped exporting oil in a dispute with Baghdad. The regional government says that it will contribute no more oil to the Iraqi government's oil-export program until disagreements are resolved over who is responsible for paying foreign oil companies operating in the Kurdish region.
Germans went to the polls after months of campaigning focused on economic issues. But there was another topic that increasingly made its way into the political debate this year despite being long considered a no-go area.
With Western eyes focused on fighting the Taliban in Afghan's south and east, security in the previously peaceful north has dramatically worsened. Taliban numbers are growing, too few Afghan forces patrol, and German troops sent for reconstruction are reluctant to switch to a full combat role.
The Obama administration is at a crossroads in its strategy for Afghanistan. The top U.S. commander there has called for more troops, warning that the war in Afghanistan could be lost to the Taliban without them. But U.S. President Barack Obama says he wants more time to consider all the variables in the Afghan problem before making an immediate decision.
Can Afghanistan's nascent free press act as a gadfly to prod the country's famously slow bureaucracy to act on forgotten cases? One radio listener hoped so and called in with a curious request. The listener -- an Afghan citizen imprisoned in Tajikistan -- wanted the show to look into what happened to a year-old agreement to repatriate Afghan prisoners to their home country.
Demonstrations taking place amid an official march in support of the Palestinian cause are the first since police and vigilantes intimidated the opposition off the streets with mass arrests two months ago.
Did former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher secretly not want Germany’s reunification on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall? That’s the conclusion from a report today in "The Times" newspaper of London. The report is based on copies of Kremlin records smuggled out of Moscow in the early 1990s by a young Russian researcher.
As Georgia tries to impound ships delivering cargo to breakaway Abkhazia, Sukhumi has responded by threatening to destroy any Georgian warships operating off its coastline. The feud, which has the potential to escalate into an armed confrontation, poses tough legal questions for third parties. Should ships from other nations respect Georgia’s sea blockade? Or is Tbilisi acting out of bounds by treating any shipments to Sukhumi as smuggling?
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the "Great First of September" revolution that brought him to power. The week of celebrations come as Libya is reopening to the West and international oil companies, aided by their governments, are racing to invest in the country.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki came to power as part of the alliance of Shi'ite religious parties that dominates the government. But now the two sides are going separate ways, with Maliki appearing ready to tie his fortunes to a multiconfessional alliance.
Iran has been in deep political crisis for two months since the June 12 presidential elections. But the nature of the crisis seems to be changing with time. The first phase pitted hard-line conservatives against reformers who say Mahmud Ahmadinejad stole the election. But that fight is increasingly being overshadowed by a second one: a public battle between Ahmadinejad’s camp and other powerful members of the conservative establishment over how powerful he will be in his second term.
In Turkey, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has secured Ankara's backing for the South Stream gas pipeline project, which will cross the Black Sea through Turkey's territorial waters so as to bypass Ukraine. The pipeline is seen as a competitor to the EU's Nabucco project, which will also transit through Turkey and already has secured Ankara's approval.
The president’s first term was largely about completing the hard-line backlash, approved by the Supreme Leader, against the reformist camp led by former President Mohammad Khatami. And Ahmadinejad did the job thoroughly. But now Ahmadinejad begins his second term immediately after feuding with the supreme leader. At issue was Khamenei’s backing of conservative demands that the president dismiss a top aide.
The most-feared force that keeps protestors off the streets of Tehran is a shadowy group of men who wear street clothes and carry clubs and pistols. When they swoop down on a demonstration in cars without license plates, the police stand back and so does the Basij militia. The men literally get away with murder. Who are they?
A fresh challenge of Iran's disputed election by a key group of religious leaders comes just as hard-liners step up their attacks on the opposition. Is it part of a growing rift in the establishment brought on by hidden efforts to pick the next supreme leader and snuff out republican institutions?
The hard-line camp of Iran's ruling establishment has so far quashed a major challenge by reformists. But a much greater test may lie ahead. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is ill and a succession battle looms. The hard-liners are unlikely to leave the choice to chance.
Iran's supreme leader is nominally above factional politics. But Ali Khamenei has backed hard-liners in key battles with reformists, and conservative methods and determination to win the recent election might hint that a battle for succession has already begun.
Iranian state television has begun to broadcast confessions by some of the hundreds of people arrested in the protests that have rocked Tehran. The confessions follow a similar storyline: the protesters were provoked to act by VOA or the BBC.
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