This Week in Asia takes a closer look at the Arbakais, an Afghan tribe resisting the Taliban; the political vacuum in Thailand and; the new Pakistani president's personality.
A suicide car bombing of a UN convoy on Sunday in Afghanistan killed two local doctors. In a separate incident, six children were killed when a bomb they were playing with exploded.
French Defense Minister Hervé Morin arrived in Afghanistan accompanied by seventeen relatives of French soldiers killed in an August 18 ambush that shocked France and sparked a heated debate about the country's involvement in Afghanistan.
FRANCE 24's Claire Billet spent a few days with Taliban fighters and accompanied them during one of their operations against Afghan security forces. Scroll down to read about Billet's encounter with the insurgents.
Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan's tribal zones are the ground zero of the "war on terror". Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has pledged to fight terrorism. But it's not easy to play sheriff when the laws are the heart of the problem.
A senior White House official said Tuesday that several allied countries would reduce their forces in Iraq to just a "handful" before the end of the year. President Bush on Tuesday also announced a US troop drawdown.
A coalition air raid under US command last month killed 90 civilians in a western Afghan village, sparking widespread anger and exposing the limitations of the Western-backed Afghan government.
President George W. Bush said he would cut US troops strength in Iraq by 8,000 in coming months, and that he would send 4,500 troops to Afghanistan by January, when he leaves the White House.
US President George W. Bush is to announce plans to withdraw about 8,000 American troops from Iraq by February 2009 and deploy soldiers to Afghanistan, where violence has been surging.
Afghan archaeologist Zameryalai Tarzi and his team have discovered the remains of an ancient 19-metre-long (62-foot) "sleeping Buddha" in central Afghanistan's Bamiyan a government official said Monday.
