In pockets of Afghanistan, U.S. losing ground -- Newsday.com: "Nearly six years after the United States toppled the Taliban regime in the wake of Sept. 11, Nuristan, like the rest of the country, has no effective government. For this province half the size of New Jersey and home to about 750,000 people, Gov. Tamim Nuristani is authorized 300 police officers -- barely more than the number assigned to a typical Long Island precinct. When he begged to hire 180 men as auxiliary cops last year to help stop guerrillas infiltrating from neighboring Pakistan, the government agreed, but then said it had no money for salaries and fired them."
Broken Spring? : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.
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