By Kevin Sieff KABUL —Afghan commanders have refused more than a dozen times within the past two months to act on U.S. intelligence regarding high-level insurgents, arguing that night-time operations to target the men would result in civilian casualties, Afghan officials say. The defiance highlights the shift underway in Afghanistan as Afghan commanders make use of their newfound power to veto operations pr ...

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday that U.S. officials were doing everything possible to win the release of a U.S. soldier held captive by Afghan insurgents, a day after his parents went public with complaints about government inaction. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was captured in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 and is believed to be held by the militant Haqqani network somewhere in the tribal areas of ...

By Simon Denyer NEW DELHI — There are few places in the world where the opportunity for solar power is more blindingly obvious than India. There are also few industries where the possibility of collaboration between India and the United States is more tantalizing. But although India’s solar industry is finally taking off, enormous hurdles must be overcome before it can make a meaningful contribution to the ...

By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung The United States launched airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday that killed as many as seven militants, the second American missile attack in the country since the CIA and other spy agencies disrupted an al-Qaeda airline bomb plot, U.S. officials said. The strike came as new details surfaced about the foiling of the plot, including the disclosure that the operative who posed as a ...

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MATTHEW ROSENBERG HAILEY, Idaho — The parents of the only American soldier held captive by Afghan insurgents have broken a yearlong silence about the status of their son, abruptly making public that he is a focus of secret negotiations between the Obama administration and the Taliban over a proposed prisoner exchange. The negotiations, currently stalled, involved a trade of five Ta ...

Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues, and author of the Great Decisions 2012 article Exit from Afghanistan and Iraq. He spoke with Sarah Marion Shore about the current state of the drawdown in both countries. 1. The draft of a new strategic partnership with Afghanistan calls for a decade of continued U.S. presence and financial s ...

By James Joyner UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hinted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will suffer the fate of Laurent Gbago, Charles Taylor, or Muammar Qaddafi if his reign of violence continues. He declared, “no leader, anywhere, should imagine that he—or she—enjoys impunity for crimes of atrocity.” Speaking at the Atlantic Council Awards Dinner [2], where he received the award for Distinguished In ...

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="296" caption="Innovations in drone technology: The modern unmanned aerial vehicle in the U.S. can track its roots back to the Civil War and has been heavily influenced by innovations in Israel."][/caption] By David Ignatius During this week of retrospectives on the killing of Osama bin Laden, one of the most interesting public comments was White House counterterroris ...