World

As President Obama continues to consider his options on Afghanistan, The New York Times has a good primer on what the military could do with the various levels of reinforcements being considered. This is what the military believes it could do with an extra 40,000 troops: “Should President Obama decide to send 40,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, the most ambitious plan under consideration at the White House, the military would have enormous flexibility to deploy as many as 15,000 troops to the Taliban center of gravity in the south, 5,000 to the critical eastern border with Pakistan and 10,000 as trainers for the Afghan security forces. The rest could

Afghan politics stinks; we all know it.  But it’s still shocking to read how the former governor of Helmand, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, encouraged his supporters to join the Taliban after he lost his position, in 2005, under a cloud of drug-running allegations.  Here’s what he tells today’s Telegraph:   “When I was no longer governor the government stopped paying for the people who supported me ….  I sent 3,000 of them off to the Taliban because I could not afford to support them but the Taliban was making payments. Lots of people, including my family members, went back to the Taliban because they had lost respect for the government. The

Cameron just made a very good point in his speech – namely, that Brown claimed just days ago that Obama would make an Afghanistan announcement in the “next few days”. Now, we have no idea when the announcement will come. But this isn’t Gordon Brown’s fault – it’s Obama’s. The way Washington is treating Britain is deplorable and the subject of an excellent cover piece tomorrow by Con Coghlin (cover image above). As Con says in his piece: ‘The Afghan issue has made clear the astonishing disregard with which Mr Obama treats Britain . As he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan – a decision which will

The people of Kosovo voted yesterday in the first local elections since the Albanian-majority region won independence from Serbia last year. More than 1.5 million people were eligible to cast their ballot and some 74 political parties, coalitions and independent candidates stood. The elections are a test of Kosovo’s readiness to organize democratic elections on its own and to be taken seriously as an independent state. So far, 63 countries have recognized Kosovo, including the US and most countries in the EU. But Serbia still does not recognize Kosovo, and the influential Serbian Orthodox Church urged the 120,000 ethnic Serbs in Kosovo to boycott the polls. They have been encouraged

The Independent’s front page splash about British troops torturing and sexually abusing Iraqis in 2003 has, to put it mildly, put me right off my cornflakes. The allegations are horrific. Acts of live pornography designed to humiliate sexually conservative Muslim sensibilities, the electrocution of detainees, beatings, rapes and widespread detention without charge – the echoes of Abu Ghraib resound. Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing all the Iraqis, wrote to the MoD saying: ‘Due to the wider access of information and disclosure in the US, we do know that sexual humiliation was authorised as an aid to interrogation at the highest levels of the US administration. Given the history of the

I’m in Slovenia, having joined the discussions chaired by Madeleine Albright on NATO’s strategic concept, the alliance’s blueprint. I have managed to grab a seat next President Obama’s NATO envoy, Ivo Daalder, and we have all just listened to Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee.   This process is impressive and the who’s who of the NATO community is here, as they were at the first event in Luxembourg a month ago. But there is still an unreal sense about the process. For while it is a great PR opportunity for NATO, it is hard to see how the NATO members will overcome the serious differences