Afghanistan

TOKYO – Japan will pay the salaries of Afghanistan’s 80,000 police officers for six months as part of its ongoing financial support for the country, a government official said Tuesday. Tokyo will also fund the building of 200 schools and 100 hospitals, and train thousands of teachers in Afghanistan, said …

SANG-I-KHEL, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The United States’ decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger. Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan to tackle …

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A battle just outside southern Afghanistan’s largest city has killed at least six Taliban fighters, while an airstrike against militants elsewhere in the south killed eight, officials said Sunday. A battle in the Panjwayi district — 15 miles (25 kilometers) west of Kandahar city — began late …

KABUL, Feb. 21 — The additional 17,000 troops the Obama administration is preparing to send to Afghanistan will face both an aggressive, well-armed Taliban insurgency and an unarmed but equally daunting foe: public opinion. In more than a dozen interviews across the capital this week, Afghans said that instead of …

KABUL (AFP) – US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi assured President Hamid Karzai Saturday that Washington would accelerate Afghanistan’s reconstruction as part of a new “war on terror” strategy, his office said. Pelosi visited the country at the head of an eight-member Congressional delegation as the United States was reviewing its …

KABUL – U.S. military airstrikes in western Afghanistan killed 13 Afghan civilians and only three militants, the U.S. said Saturday, three days after an American general traveled to the site to investigate. Civilian casualties have been a huge source of friction between the U.S. and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who …

KABUL (AFP) – Three soldiers in the US-led coalition helping to fight a Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan have died after their patrol was hit by a bomb, according to the US military. The three were killed on Friday in the southern province of Uruzgan, it said in a statement. …

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Obama administration told a federal court late Friday it will maintain the Bush administration’s position that battlefield detainees held without charges by the United States in Afghanistan are not entitled to constitutional rights to challenge their detention Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its …

KABUL (AFP) –  British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Wednesday applauded the deployment of 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan, but said his country had no plans to follow suit. Britain’s commitment to Afghanistan remained strong, despite the cost in cash and soldiers’ lives, the visiting Miliband told a news …

ASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama approved the deployment of 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, a surge in numbers promptly welcomed by the Kabul government Wednesday as it battles a Taliban insurgency. Stressing that “the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action,” President Obama ordered …