Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
When U.S. Ambassador William Wood paid a visit, ex-Taliban commander and Musa Qala district chief Mullah Abdul Salaam had a list of requests: greater reconstruction efforts, more security, and assurances that corruption won't block government aid.
For years, Afghan officials including President Hamid Karzai have extended an olive branch to moderate Taliban to lay down their arms and back the government. But their overtures have been largely rejected -- until now.
The security situation in Baghdad and Iraq's vast Al-Anbar Governorate has improved markedly this year as a result of the U.S. military's troop increase and local Sunni tribal leaders' efforts against Al-Qaeda-linked militants. But a fresh wave of violence north of Baghdad could indicate that Al-Qaeda fighters and other militants are changing their tactics.
Afghan government troops and NATO forces are patrolling the southern town of Musa Qala today after driving out Taliban fighters who had been entrenched there for 10 months. But even as the troops searched for booby traps and stranded militants, the Afghan Defense Ministry said hundreds of Taliban had launched a counterattack in the nearby district of Sangin -- an area that includes a road project linked to the reconstruction of the strategic Kajaki hydroelectric dam.
December 7, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- NATO-led forces and Afghan government troops in southern Afghanistan have launched a joint offensive aimed at seizing a town that has been controlled by Taliban militants for the past 10 months.
A year ago, NATO boasted that Taliban fighters had been driven from a volatile part of southern Afghanistan to allow for the reconstruction of the strategic Kajaki hydroelectric dam. But the Taliban returned to make the dam emblematic of the country's security and development problems in 2007.
(RFE/RL) November 24, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan has awarded a state-owned company in China with the right to develop a large copper field to the south of Kabul, following two years of bidding.
November 20, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The U.S. military wants to nearly double its funding to train and equip Pakistan's Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force with members who are the same ethnicity as pro-Taliban tribal fighters near the border with Afghanistan.
Dignitaries attend funeral services for the six lawmakers killed in the attack (Pajhwak Afghan News) November 19, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- An internal UN report from Afghanistan says many people who were killed early this month when a suicide bomber attacked a group of Afghan lawmakers appear to have been shot dead by bodyguards after the blast.
Afghan citizens have been complaining for years about corruption, saying nothing can be done without paying bribes to officials. But, with some harsh words from President Karzai, is the government now beginning to listen?
Sufism, a mystic tradition in Islam, is increasingly popular in Iran. But recent clashes between Sufis and security forces have highlighted Sufism's uneasy relationship with the authorities, in a country where conservative Shi'a clerics have called it a deviation of Islam.
Pakistani and Afghan authorities have repeatedly accused each other of failing to prevent cross-border suicide attacks by Taliban-linked militants. A recent UN report suggests that the crisis won't be resolved as long as both sides persist in blaming the other.
Speculation is rife about who carried out a bomb attack in northern Afghanistan that killed six members of the Afghan parliament and at least 35 other people. And there are fears that violence could escalate and widen rifts between rival factional militia groups in the north.
As attention focuses on the battle against the Taliban in the south and east, a different dynamic is lingering in the north. There, ethnic militias are reportedly using the Taliban threat as a pretext to hoard weapons and assert their authority.
The blasts that killed more than 130 people in Karachi on October 18, aimed at former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, were a dramatic example of how security in Pakistan and Afghanistan is inextricably linked.
October 16, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan this week is hosting an international governmental conference for the first time in decades.
October 11, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Afghanistan's central government today is denying reports that it traded Taliban prisoners for a German hostage who was freed on October 10 after being held by Taliban kidnappers for more than two months.
Financing is in place and construction is expected to begin soon on the last remaining section of the "Ring Road," a highway that loops the rugged mountain terrain and sparsely populated countryside to connect major cities.
Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan have seen a sharp increase in suicide attacks during the past six months. But as militants train more suicide bombers, some recruits are having second thoughts.
The U.S. military is launching an intensified effort to stop what it says is Iranian support for insurgents in Iraq. U.S. forces are building a forward-operations base in Iraq just a few kilometers from the border with Iran.
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