Afghanistan

Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland dishwasher who heard a scream, kicked in a door and rescued three women from horrific captivity, stepped out of a white Rolls-Royce on U Street NW Friday night and seconds later was on Alex Soto's Facebook page. "You're kidding me," shouted Soto, who was strolling in front of Ben's Chili Bowl with his girlfriend when Ramsey miraculously emerged from the gleaming Rolls. "You're, like, a lifesaver. I've been watching this on the news all the time and here...

"And the war will end by the end of next year . . . " In the elusive search for an Obama Doctrine, that struck me as a telling phrase when I heard the president deliver it last week as he and British Prime Minister David Cameron took a couple of questions from reporters. Obama was speaking about the withdrawal of U.S. and allied combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. "Our troops will continue to come home, and the war will end," he said. In fact, the war is unlikely to end. It may well...

The 9-year-old boy with pale skin and big, piercing eyes captivated Mirzahan at first sight. "He is more handsome than anyone in the village," the 22-year-old farmer said, explaining why he is grooming the boy as a sexual partner and companion. There was another important factor that made Waheed easy to take on as a bacha bazi, or a boy for pleasure: "He doesn't have a father, so there is no one to stop this. " A growing number of Afghan children are being coerced into a life of sexual abuse.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Motorcycle-riding gunmen assassinated a police chief in front of his house after he led an anti-Taliban campaign in western Afghanistan, an official said Saturday. Police Chief Abdul Ghani was leaving his driveway in his car outside his home in Farah province when the two raced up and opened fire. Provincial spokesman Abdul Rahman Zhawandai said that Ghani was rushed to hospital after the attack Friday night but died of his wounds. Ghani had recently launched a...

When I joined the Marine Corps, I knew I would kill people. I was trained to do it in a number of ways, from pulling a trigger to ordering a bomb strike to beating someone to death with a rock. As I got closer to deploying to war in 2009, my lethal abilities were refined, but my ethical understanding of killing was not. I held two seemingly contradictory beliefs: Killing is always wrong, but in war, it is necessary. How could something be both immoral and necessary? I didn't have time to resolve this question before...

NEW DELHI For Americans weary of nearly a dozen years of war, Afghanistan often seems like a country where nothing ever changes and the same story of ethnic and tribal struggle repeats itself in an endless loop. But Afghanistan's demographics have changed in significant ways over the past decade. Rather than being mired in a perpetual feudal twilight, Afghanistan is actually becoming a modern country. The statistical evidence of change, gathered from sources including data from the U.S. Agency for International Development...

President Obama announced in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be halved over the next 12 months, pledging that "our war in Afghanistan will be over" by the end of 2014. The president said he will withdraw 34,000 troops by this time next year, at which point about 34,000 U.S. military personnel will be left in Afghanistan. He pledged that "this drawdown will continue" throughout 2014, although the final target has not been...

The U.S. military has moved to stem the flow of contract money to Afghan insurgents, awarding at least 20 companies new contracts worth about $1 billion for military supply transport and suspending seven current contractors it found lacking in "integrity and business ethics. " The new contracts, which were finalized Monday and will take effect next month, aim to eliminate layers of brokers and middlemen who allegedly skimmed money , and to allow more transparency in a...

A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency's history, U.S. officials said. The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of U.S. counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan , killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the...

israel Military grounds fleet of drones after crash Israel's military has grounded a fleet of high-altitude surveillance drones after one was downed over the Mediterranean Sea. The military says it intentionally crashed the unmanned aircraft late Saturday because of a malfunction. The military would not say how many aircraft were grounded. The planes will stay down while an investigation is conducted. A defense official said the drone was the Israeli-made Heron 1, which flies at high altitudes and...

Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero directs the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. A decade of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has confirmed that improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the weapon of choice for threat networks around the globe. While there are obvious differences between these two conflicts, there are also common threads and lessons to be learned. As Iraq fades from view and the United States focuses increasingly on post-2014 Afghanistan, I fear that some will...

DES MOINES, Iowa — When Marine Sgt. Ross Gundlach served as a dog handler in Afghanistan, he told the yellow lab who was his constant companion that he'd look her up when he returned home. "I promised her if we made it out of alive, I'd do whatever it took to find her," Gundlach said. On Friday, he made good on that vow with help from some sentimental state officials in Iowa who know how to pull off a surprise. Since leaving active duty to take classes at...

SAN DIEGO — Finals week was dangerous for Thomas Saenz. The Navy lieutenant needed armed guards and an armored car to get to an exam site, in Kabul, Afghanistan. A deadly bomb attack also caused him to his miss classes — transmitted live via the Internet — but he persevered and earned a master's degree in engineering from the University of Southern California while commanding a top security team. His class graduated on Friday, as he joins a growing number of...

In "Beyond War," David Rohde sets out to find a new path for the United States in the Middle East after a decade of war and much longer support for unpopular dictatorial regimes. Surveying a region in turmoil and looking back to American follies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Rohde calls for the United States to scale back its military ambitions and focus instead on supporting moderates and an impatient rising generation of Arabs and Muslims eager to engage with the world. Rohde characterizes his book as "an effort to...

WASHINGTON — An Army general who served as a top official on U.S. joint military staffs in Afghanistan and at the Pentagon is the choice to command U.S. troops in South Korea. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced the promotion of Lt. Gen. Curtis "Mike" Scaparrotti at a Pentagon news conference Friday. The moves comes at a tense time on the Korean Peninsula. The North has stepped up missile launches in the region and increased its threats against the U.S. in recent...

Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero directs the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. A decade of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has confirmed that improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are the weapon of choice for threat networks around the globe. While there are obvious differences between these two conflicts, there are also common threads and lessons to be learned. As Iraq fades from view and the United States focuses increasingly on post-2014 Afghanistan, I fear that some will...

Seizures in Afghanistan of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the main explosive used in Taliban bombs, more than doubled in the first seven months of 2012 compared with the same period last year, U.S. officials said. Despite that increase, senior U.S. officials said, the number of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, manufactured with the chemical compound is on pace to surpass the record levels of 2011. "We are sweeping ammonium nitrate fertilizer off the battlefield at historic...

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling to congratulate Pakistan's prime minister-elect this week on his victory in parliamentary elections , said he hoped the new government in Islamabad would create a "brotherly and peaceful atmosphere with Afghanistan" and cooperate in efforts to destroy terrorist hideouts so both "brother nations" can be saved. But across Afghan society, many people scoffed at the notions that Nawaz Sharif , a former two-time prime minister, might feel any goodwill toward Pakistan's fellow...

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — A new offensive by the Pakistani military against militants in a northwestern tribal area has displaced thousands of people in the past week, an official said Wednesday. For years, Pakistan has been battling militant groups such as the Taliban in the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. Civilians are often caught in the middle of the fighting, and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced over the years of conflict. About a week...