War & Conflict Archive

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised to withdraw from Iraq, “finish the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban,” shut down Gitmo and break through the impasse with Iran. But as president, Obama is learning that conducting U.S. foreign policy is far more difficult than simply critiquing it. As a consequence, on the central foreign policy and national security issue of the day — the global struggle against Islamic terrorists and their patrons and partners — there is far more common ground between Obama and former President George W. Bush than Obama’s supporters expected, and less change than his opponents feared. […]

CHOWKAY VALLEY, Afghanistan — When U.S. Army Capt. Joe Snowden first asked the elders in this remote valley in eastern Afghanistan to stop growing poppies, they laughed. The poppies, once processed into heroin, fuel the drug trade that provides much of the financing for the Taliban and other fighters in the area, explained Snowden, who is deployed here from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Italy. Although the elders assured Snowden that they understood this, his request still bordered on the absurd. So did Snowden’s request for the name of the leader of the local insurgent cell, which made the […]

President Barack Obama had multiple audiences in mind during his lightning 6-hour visit to Afghanistan this weekend. In both his meetings and his speech delivered to U.S. soldiers and broadcast worldwide, Obama wanted to catalyze improved Afghan government performance, reassure Afghan citizens, bolster U.S. troop morale, and make his commitment to winning the Afghan war clear to global audiences. For security reasons, Obama departed unannounced from Washington on Saturday night, arriving at Bagram airfield, on the outskirts of Kabul, early Sunday evening. He then flew by helicopter to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Afterwards, Obama returned to Bagram to address […]

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — The two Russian-made helicopters swooped low over the village of Mahageer, pushing a stinging swirl of dust over the vineyards and pastures. The Mi-17 transports from the Afghan National Army Air Corps’ Kabul Wing touched down in close formation, their rotors just yards apart. Squads of Afghan National Army commandos leaped from the choppers and fanned out, aiming their M-16 rifles. With the perimeter secure, the commandos pulled cardboard boxes from the helicopters. When their holds were empty, the Mi-17s lifted off, blasting the fields with a fresh wave of grit. Last week’s Afghan air assault had […]

For close to a decade now I’ve been roaming the world, delivering in Johnny Appleseed fashion a message that I refined just after 9/11 for the secretary of defense’s Office of Force Transformation: The world’s core powers must develop a systemic approach to postwar and post-disaster coalition interventions inside what I call the “Non-Integrated Gap,” by which I mean those countries and regions least connected to globalization. This vision encompasses the so-called “whole of government” approach, but extends it vigorously to also include the private sector, based on the knowledge that jobs are the only exit strategy. In short, when […]

NEW DELHI — Last month, suicide bombers attacked hotels and guesthouses in Kabul, killing 18 people and injuring 35 more, with most of the victims Indians. India immediately rushed National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon to the Afghan capital for a first-hand assessment of security arrangements for the roughly 4,000 Indians working on various aid and development projects in Afghanistan. The bombing is the latest in a string of attacks, the most high-profile of which remains the July 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which left 58 people dead. As a result, India has strengthened its Afghan policy […]

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Gov. Abdul Basir Salangi grew worried as the snow fell heavily in Afghanistan’s Parwan province on Feb. 8. Every day, some 14,000 cars, trucks and buses pass through Parwan’s Salang Pass — a system of winding roads and tunnels cutting through and over the Hindu Kush Mountains into northern Afghanistan. The snow could strand motorists, or even trap them in tunnels. In 1982, hundreds of people died when Soviet military convoys collided inside one of the tunnels. Vehicles idling behind the accident site filled the tunnel with carbon monoxide, suffocating the people inside. Salangi grabbed some security […]

In announcing on March 8 that Venezuela is interested in restoring diplomatic ties with Colombia, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro noted that any improvement will not take place while current Colombian President Álvaro Uribe remains in office. The jab was just one of many that Bogotá and Caracas have traded over the past eight tumultuous years, but the conciliatory rhetoric suggests that the two countries may be turning a corner in bilateral relations. A lot remains to be accomplished. Ties between the two neighbors, always tense, took a turn for the worse after a March 2008 attack by Colombian forces […]

As the United States steps up its campaign to impose economic sanctions on Iran, fears are growing in Washington and in the Middle East that Iran will try to trigger a new war in the region in order to shift attention from its nuclear activities, throw the U.S. and its allies off balance, and put Israel on the defensive. Few people, if any, envision Iran launching a direct attack. Rather, the concern is that Tehran will manage to stir up trouble in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, or even Syria, in order to spark a new confrontation between Israel […]

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — Standing on a mountaintop, 1st Lt. Maximilian Soto swept his arm from side to side, indicating a 400-square-mile expanse of fields, rivers and streams surrounding the village of Estalef in Parwan province, just north of Kabul. “All this,” he said, “is mine.” With a force of just 26 men from the Special Troops Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Soto provides security for a chunk of Afghanistan the size of a typical American county. “It’s quite difficult,” he told World Politics Review. In December, U.S. President Barack Obama announced he would be sending 30,000 new […]

The run up to this weekend’s Iraqi election — the second general election held since the fall of Saddam’s regime — was marked by speculation, anticipation and no shortage of controversy. Since the last such election in 2005, the Iraqi people have witnessed continual changes to their country and political map, and the trajectory of Iraq as determined by this latest election could change accordingly. There is little doubt that, although the elections saw some violence, they were a marked improvement from 2005 and a testament that democracy is taking root in Iraq. There is much at stake in the […]

National security types have long noted — and complained about — the relative lack of military veterans in Congress, which results in too few experienced votes being cast when the prospect of overseas interventions is raised. I have long noted — and complained about — the fact that Congress’ most prominent military vets hail from the Vietnam era, which has led many to instinctively reject the necessity and utility of conducting nation-building and counterinsurgency. Clearly, our lengthy interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan will alter this generational equation, but how will the experiences of today’s veterans impact their votes in tomorrow’s […]

In the U.K.’s House of Lords on Feb. 3, members of parliament debated expanding Great Britain’s aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the site of several intersecting security and humanitarian crises. “Some 5 million people have died there since 1998,” said Lord David Alton of Liverpool. “It is the most deadly conflict since World War II.” Alton based his figure for Congolese war deaths on a widely cited 2008 report from the International Rescue Committee, which claimed that 5.4 million Congolese had died of war-related causes between 1998 and 2007. The causes included starvation, disease and combat between government […]

The success of Operation Moshtarak, NATO’s military offensive to seize the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, will be determined by how well coalition forces establish a functioning government now that the bulk of the actual fighting is over. Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently described the plan by saying, “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in.” The concept of “government in a box,” or a functioning government ready for immediate deployment the moment combat operations end, is a novel one. Most of the attention lavished upon ISAF’s plans, however, has focused on the man chosen […]