After weeks of closed-door talks, the US and Afghanistan finalised a partnership agreement Sunday detailing the scope of US involvement in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of its troops in 2014. The deal must be signed by both countries’ presidents.
Five insurgents who were planning “large-scale bloodshed” in Kabul with the use of 10,000 kilograms of explosives have been arrested, an intelligence spokesperson said Saturday. Three of the men were Pakistani, while two were Afghan.
Afghan-led forces, bolstered by US-led coalition helicopters, overcame insurgents holed up in two buildings in Kabul early Monday, putting an end to an 18-hour Taliban attack on the Afghan capital.
Life in Afghanistan has changed a lot since the fall of the Taliban regime. Women have gained some hard-won rights, such as the right to an education, to work and to walk unaccompanied in the streets. Although some are disappointed with the outcome of the NATO intervention, others fear they will lose their individual liberties if the Taliban come back to power. Marie Normand and Sultan Faizy report from Kabul.
It's less than two weeks since four French soldiers were gunned down by a rogue Afghan soldier during a jogging session. France immediately denounced it as a Taliban attack, and the French mission was suspended while security was stepped up. Witnesses have also described tensions between the Afghan soldiers and their mentors. So how do the Afghans themselves explain what happened, and how did they carry on without the French? Afghan journalist Sultan Faizy goes inside a training camp in Kabul.
A leaked NATO report says the Taliban, backed by Pakistani intelligence services, are on course to retake control of Afghanistan in 2014 after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country. The "state of the Taliban" report was compiled from information taken from 27,000 interrogations of 4,000 captured al Qaeda and Taliban operatives at the US Bagram air base. The document drew immediate criticism from Pakistan.
Ten years to the day after anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud was killed in combat, Afghanistan celebrated his passing with a ceremony that was notable this year for the absence of President Hamid Karzai.
When he was Afghanistan’s top banker, Abdul Qadir Fitrat was known as the "milk cow". But after a high profile parliamentary disclosure on the Kabul Bank scandal, Fitrat's fortunes changed, forcing him to flee Afghanistan.
A suicide bomber attacked the Safi Landmark hotel in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul Monday, killing at least three people and wounding several others. The hotel was the target of a similar attack nearly a year ago, which killed 16 people.
Afghan security forces have beaten angry customers scrambling to withdraw their savings from Kabul bank, which is caught in a corruption scandal. In Australia, Julia Gillard remains in power but now faces the challenge of holding together the country's first minority Labour government in nearly 70 years. And we look at company bosses in China who mix business with trying to convert their employees to Christianity.
