This Memorial Day, I would like to pay tribute to all those American military men and women fighting in Afghanistan and beyond. Actually, I would like to go further and thank all those Americans who have sacrificed for this country by serving in our militaries throughout our history, whether in Vietnam, Iraq, WWII, etc. To […]
It is very easy to just sit here and write about US political and military strategy in Afghanistan and discuss how these battles are either won or lost and lose track of what is actually happening in the lives of the individuals actually doing the fighting (and dying), both Americans, Europeans, Afghanis, etc. The iconic […]
Rakhat Aliev, President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, has been living in Vienna, Austria since 2007 after a public split with Nazarbayev. Ever since, he has been denigrating the Kazakh leadership. He has finally put it all in a book, published in German and Russian, called The Godfather-in-Law. It is available in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The book […]
In the below one question daily briefing by the US State Department, Spokesman Ian Kelly attempts to describe the ongoing process of the so-called civilian surge in Afghanistan. Though the ‘people surge’ is considered an integral part of the Obama administration’s Afghan strategy, many have wondered where exactly they were going to obtain the necessary […]
It took a matter of hours for President Hamid Karzai’s administration to deny the rumor that his government was to take on former U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as a CEO or ‘unelected prime minister’ of the central Asian state. The New York Times reported yesterday, based on unnamed American and Afghan officials, that Karzia would […]
Afghan school girls have been targets of the Taliban ever since the group starting gaining power in the country in 1994 and the group remains vigilant in stopping women from gaining access to such basic rights, especially an education. The Taliban have burned down hundreds of girl schools in the past few years and has […]
The Soviet Union worshipped the Olympic games as a proof positive of Socialism’s inevitable victory, one mustachioed female shotputter at a time. Those days may be history but their absurdist spirit lives on in the most appropriate of venues: the Eurovision Song Contest. Just as Russia used to go to great lengths to demonstrate its […]
The US House of Representatives passed a $94.2 billion dollar funding bill for Afghanistan yesterday, but cracks may be appearing in overall US support of the war effort there. The bill passed 368 to 60, with 51 Democrats and 9 Republicans voting against providing more funds for a conflict that new President Barack Obama has […]
The Los Angeles Times has reported a significant change in US-Pakistani usage of drone attacks inside Pakistan territory, and that is that both sides have agreed on a framework to work together. US and Pakistani military officials both anonymously acknowledged that they had joined forces in using US Predator drones to attack Al Qaeda and […]
I apologize for my recent absence as I was getting married. Speaking of marriage, while I was gone US President Barack Obama deepened his ties to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Obama administration held another trilateral meeting with Afghan’s Karzai and Pakistan’s Zardari in DC, defended the US military’s use of airstrikes in […]
Eight countries from the Middle East and Central Asia met in Prague on Friday to push along plans for the Nabucco pipeline. Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Egypt signed the agreement while Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan insisted there were more issues to be addressed. Turkmenistan is sending a delegation to Brussels in June for another meeting […]
On March 26, at a meeting in Almaty of state-sponsored environmentalists and ecologists, the Syr Darya was declared too polluted to even be used for irrigation in Kazakhstan. By the time the river weaves through the other Central Asian states, including through the Ferghana Valley, the river has accumulated the runoff from massive amounts of […]
WWII Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, a PBS-BBC co-production that premieres in the US on May 6, engages, shocks – and misleads. When someone at PBS sent the FPA Russia Blog an advance DVD of the series, I was both excited and puzzled by its audacious plunge into the well-trodden turf […]
I don’t normally use this blog to discuss specific violent attacks in Afghanistan, but these incidents are becoming appalling to read about, I can’t imagine living them. In a series of attacks yesterday, over 25 Afghan civilians, security officials, and government figures were killed. The provincial mayor of the eastern province of Laghman was killed […]
With words of caution, Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that his country will increase its troops in Afghanistan by nearly 50%, moving from around a 1,000 to 1,500. These troops, like most of their European counterparts in NATO, will mainly be training Afghan military and police units as well as providing security for the […]