Afghanistan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO’s top operations commander hit out Monday at allies resisting his call for the alliance to use more aggressive tactics against Afghan drug production.

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani authorities have begun expelling Afghan refugees from a tribal region that has become the main battleground between troops and fighters linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda, officials said on Monday.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan began registering voters on Monday for elections due next year that will test support for President Hamid Karzai and democracy itself which is threatened by a virulent Taliban insurgency in which thousands have died.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s commander in Afghanistan has said the war against the Taliban cannot be won, the Sunday Times reported.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – NATO launched an airstrike near the Afghan border with Pakistan on Friday, but there was no intrusion into Pakistani territory, a Pakistani military spokesman said, contradicting accounts by intelligence officials in the region.

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani tribesmen backed by army helicopter gunships battled Islamist militants in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing several of the militants, a tribal elder said.

KABUL (Reuters) – Three soldiers from a U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan have been killed in a blast in the south of the country, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that he has made repeated efforts over the last two years to engage Saudi Arabia in peace talks with the Taleban.

KABUL (Reuters) – Muhammad Nabi reflects one of Afghanistan’s microcosms – a farmer once besieged by the Taliban, then by drought, who then fled to the city and now rails against food prices he blames on the very government he voted for.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s foreign minister on Sunday declined to confirm a report that said the government was in contact with Taliban insurgents to negotiate an end to the conflict.