Afghanistan

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — NATO on Wednesday urged Canada not to pull its troops from Afghanistan’s dangerous Kandahar region and pledged to help find the 1,000 additional allied troops Ottawa is demanding.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the “forgotten war” because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent study.

OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada’s military in Afghanistan has been taking fewer prisoners and releasing them quicker after it stopped turning them over to Afghan authorities following torture allegations, The Globe and Mail said.

By Alexandre Deslongchamps Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada should place conditions on a decision to extend its military mission in Afghanistan beyond 2009, as a government- commissioned panel recommended last week.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is in Davos to participate in the World Economic Forum, has said Iran has been supporting his country since the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001.

WASHINGTON, Jan 26: The US-installed Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that he knew people called him “a puppet of America” and he was willing to accept this image because without US help Afghanistan would have been occupied by its neighbours and Al Qaeda.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, — An American woman and her Afghan driver were kidnapped by gunmen in this southern town Saturday morning on her way to work, the provincial governor said.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan – Nine police and two civilians were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, a provincial doctor said on Thursday, but the coalition said Taliban fighters had been killed.

KABUL – Afghanistan launched its first prison for women in the capital Kabul on Thursday as part of a plan to build 15 such facilities, officials said.

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 – A senior U.S. military commander said on Wednesday he did not expect the Taliban to mount a major offensive in eastern Afghanistan this spring, but experts warned of rising violence and a stronger insurgency.