Tag Archives: Hamid Karzai

Taliban and Afghan government begin informal talks

Several sources have confirmed over the past week that informal peace talks have begun between Taliban leaders and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government. NATO has been facilitating the meetings by providing Taliban leaders with safe passage to Kabul to meet with high-level members of the Karzai government.  The Taliban continues to reject negotiation in its […]

Corruption increases in Afghanistan

A recent report from Integrity Watch Afghanistan has found that corruption is steadily on the rise in Afghanistan. National Corruption Survey 2010 reports that the Afghan population paid twice as much in bribes in 2009 as it did in 2006: today bribery represents “a burden of 1 billion USD on the Afghan GDP.” The massive, […]

850 additional German troops to be deployed to Afghanistan

As promised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the recent London Conference on Afghanistan, the German cabinet has approved the deployment 850 additional German soldiers to Afghanistan (“The German cabinet approves deployment of an extra 850 soldiers to Afghanistan,” Deutsche-Welle, 9 February 2010). The increase, which still has to be approved by the Bundestag (the lower house […]

Karzai considers conscription

With international partners growing impatient, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced at a conference of high-level defence officials on Sunday that he is considering the introduction of conscription.  Karzai told the delegates at the Munich Security Conference that conscription may be necessary in order to meet the recently adopted international goal of creating a 300,000-strong Afghan […]