Afghanistan Archive

On Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to deploy an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria. The increase will bring the total number of U.S. ground troops there to 300, and comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s announcement that 200 more troops are also being sent to Iraq. Both deployments are part of the continuing U.S. war against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), but as the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria has continued to rise, it has raised fears that the United States is being sucked into another military quagmire in the […]

On Monday, East Timor asked the United Nations to begin the process of establishing a permanent maritime boundary with Australia in the Timor Sea. In an email interview, Clinton Fernandes, a professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, discussed Australia’s ties with East Timor and the border dispute. WPR: What is the background to the current agreement on maritime boundaries between Australia and East Timor, and what changes is East Timor seeking to make to the agreement? Clinton Fernandes: In 1972, Australia negotiated a maritime boundary with Indonesia that granted it the lion’s share of oil and gas […]