Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
Medical experts from the U.S.-led antiterrorism coalition treat hundreds of impoverished Afghan civilians every week. But mobile medical teams that deliver medical aid to Afghan women have to be sensitive to the cultural traditions of the country's male-dominated society. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz traveled with one of the medical teams in southern Afghanistan and filed this report.
The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan is investigating claims that Taliban leaflets are being posted overnight on the mud walls of some village compounds near the Afghan-Pakistani border ahead of a planned U.S. military offensive. The so-called "night letters" threaten villagers who cooperate with U.S.-led coalition forces. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz traveled near the Spin Boldak border crossing with a team of U.S. and Romanian troops to investigate the appearance of one such night letter in the Takteh-Pol district of Kandahar Province.
Pentagon officials confirmed weeks ago that a spring offensive is planned against suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz is in southern Afghanistan with troops from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and provides this account of the military buildup.
U.S. officials in Afghanistan say they are fighting the Taliban not only with guns but with infrastructure -- building roads, bridges, wells, schools, and power plants as a way to sap the extremist militia of the power it once held. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz is in southern Afghanistan for a firsthand look at the U.S.-led coalition's so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).
More than 400 Romanian troops are working together with U.S. forces at the Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan. RFE/RL spoke with the Romanian commander about how the mission is preparing his country for NATO membership, and visited Romanian troops on a test-firing range that previously served as an Al-Qaeda training camp.
A civil affairs program led by the U.S. military has become a mechanism for expanding the presence of international troops across Afghanistan. While much has been written about the humanitarian projects of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), little has been reported about the security elements linked to the program. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz is in Afghanistan with U.S. troops. In this report, he sheds new light on both the security elements and intelligence-gathering aspects of the PRTs.
Despite the collapse of the Taliban regime more than two years ago, Afghan men continue to prevent women from receiving care at hospitals with male staff -- even when the lives of the women are in danger. Afghan militiamen serving with the U.S.-led antiterrorism coalition even prevent mothers from visiting children hospitalized at the most sophisticated emergency medical center in the country -- the U.S.-run Combat Support Hospital at the coalition's Bagram Air Base.
In 2002, Pakistan launched a plan to eliminate the teaching of extremist views in Islamic schools called madrassahs. While the vast majority of the religious schools appear to be participating in the reform program, reports indicate that little has changed at the most radical madrassahs.
There are growing international concerns that presidential elections scheduled for June in Afghanistan may be delayed. RFE/RL spoke about those concerns with Barnett Rubin, a leading U.S. scholar on Afghanistan who helped draft the Bonn Agreement on post-Taliban transformation. Rubin is the director of the Center for Preventive Action at New York University.
India and Pakistan today began three days of talks focusing on nuclear security and their half-century dispute over Kashmir.
The 15th anniversary of the withdrawal of the last Soviet troops from Afghanistan takes place on 15 February. RFE/RL spoke with Afghan experts about the legacy of the Soviet withdrawal and the lessons in those events for both the international community and Afghan citizens.
Researchers at Human Rights Watch today released a report on how Central and Eastern European countries continue to export weapons, or serve as transit points in arms deals, to governments with poor human-rights records. Although the report focuses on case studies in Slovakia, author Lisa Misol says the findings are relevant to other countries that hope to join the European Union and NATO in May.
The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program has signed a confession in which he admits transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Islamabad continues to insist that neither Pakistan's government nor its military authorized the transfers. But experts say Khan's confession has not allayed suspicions that Pakistani officials may knowingly have allowed nuclear technology to be traded abroad.
Tehran, 1 February 2004 (RFE/RL) -- More than one-third of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, resigned today to protest a decision by conservative Islamic hard-liners to disqualify reformists from competing in upcoming elections.
Security has been tightened in Kabul after two suicide bomb attacks in as many days killed a soldier from Canada and another from Britain. RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz reports that the attacks are raising questions about who could be behind them and how they could affect presidential elections scheduled for this summer.
A dispute over whether female Afghan singers should be shown on Kabul TV has focused attention on divisions between conservative Islamists and moderates in the Afghan government.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that deposed President Saddam Hussein's regime might not have possessed any banned weapons at the time the U.S.-led coalition launched its war in Iraq last year. Powell's remarks come after David Kay, the retiring chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he thinks Iraq probably got rid of its chemical and biological weapons after the first Gulf War.
A powerful militia commander in northern Afghanistan has given a rare press conference in which he defends the refusal of some of his militia fighters to disarm. The former Afghan deputy defense minister, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, also has proposed that he head an antiterrorism force of some 20,000 commandos that would fall under the authority of the president rather than the Defense Ministry.
U.S. military officials in Afghanistan are denying claims by local Afghan officials that a recent airstrike killed 11 civilians in the southern province of Oruzgan. And they are rejecting accusations that poor intelligence and indiscriminate shooting may have led U.S. forces to kill women and children.
Pakistan's government denies that it authorized transfers of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. But under international pressure, it is promising to question individuals from its nuclear weapons program. RFE/RL speaks with international experts about why there are growing suspicions that someone in Pakistan did provide those countries with nuclear technology.
Load more
