Afghanistan: taking on the Taliban

The UK has announced that it will send 440 more troops to serve in Afghanistan, bringing the total number of its troops there to more than a thousand. The government made the announcement ahead of discussion at NATO about its military deployments in Afghanistan, which continues to be plagued by Taliban attacks. The extra troops…

The most senior British diplomat working on Afghanistan has given the most damning assessment of the UK’s record in the country that I have heard from a serving official. Jonathan Rugman reports.

Our Chief Correspondent, Alex Thomson, asks what the NATO summit in Lisbon can possibly do or say about the war in Afghanistan that hasn’t already been said and done.

With the news that Linda Norgrove may have been killed by a hand grenade thrown by one of her would-be rescuers, our Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson looks at the charged background against which aid agencies have to operate in Afghanistan.

Margaret Evison is as pretty far removed from the tub-thumping anti-war campaigning Mother. She would have great sympathy for such women – it’s just that she’s not one of them. She supports the Afghanistan war. Though having just returned from a trip to Kabul and the Panshjir Valley with the veteran reporter Sandy Gall, her…

The suicide bombing in Tajikistan has wider implications for the volatile, repressed and impoverished region of Central Asia, writes Nick Paton Walsh.