How the Kabul Embassy Attack Could Affect the Region | Newsweek International

PAKISTAN
The Mystery Spymaster
Mark Hosenball 10/4/2008 12:00:00 AM
As Pakistan copes with a spate of terrorist violence and political unrest, Bush administration officials worry that they know too little about the man who was just appointed to lead the Muslim nation's sprawling spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Last week, Islamabad disclosed that ISI's new chief will be Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Pakistan's former director of military operations and a protégé of Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, the country's top commander. Kiyani, who once headed ISI and took training courses in the U.S., is admired and trusted by American defense and intelligence officials. But they don't know much about Pasha beyond his close ties to Kiyani and that he ran operations against militants who turned tribal regions along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan into a terrorist safe haven.
INTERVIEW
'A Surge Is Good'
Lally Weymouth 9/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
With the security situation in his country steadily deteriorating, and Taliban activity on the rise, Afghan President Hamid Karzai sat down in New York last week with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth to discuss the future of Afghanistan. Excerpts:
CAPITAL SOURCES
Winning in Afghanistan
Dan Ephron 9/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
America's war in Afghanistan, soon to enter its eighth year, is arguably at its lowest point since troops drove the Taliban from power in 2001. Throughout the country, Taliban forces are making inroads. Allied casualties are at their highest since the war began. And Al Qaeda operates from a safe haven on the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, just out of America's reach.
INTERNATIONAL
Pakistan’s Dangerous Double Game
Ron Moreau 9/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
Mullah Nasrullah, a Taliban commander, made what has become a routine trek from his guerrilla base in Afghanistan across the jagged peaks into Pakistan last month. His destination: the headquarters of his patron and supplier, the powerful insurgent leader Sirajuddin Haqqani. A genial young man in his late 20s or early 30s with a bushy black beard, Haqqani leads the bloody Taliban insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, where American casualties are highest. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Nasrullah refused to specify the reason for his meeting with Haqqani, though it's likely he was looking for more suicide bombers, explosive vests, weapons and money to use against U.S. and NATO forces.
THE LAST WORD
Schloesser: Next Up--A ‘Development Surge’
Ron Moreau 9/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser commands the 19,000 U.S. combat troops who are trying to secure and revitalize to the key provinces along Afghanistan's porous and rugged eastern border with Pakistan. This year Afghan insurgent forces there—which he estimates at up to 10,000—are stronger and have been reinforced by fighters from Pakistani safe havens. In his headquarters at the sprawling U.S. base at Baghram, just north of Kabul, Schloesser chatted with NEWSWEEK's Ron Moreau about his strategy to combat the resurgent Taliban. Excerpts:
INTERNATIONAL
For the Taliban, A Crime That Pays
Sami Yousafzai 9/6/2008 12:00:00 AM
There were no seats left on the Kandahar-to-Kabul flight, so Johan Freckhaus decided to take a chance and return to Afghanistan's capital by car. After nine years in the country, the construction executive understood the danger, but with his long beard and fluency in Dari, the nation's most widely spoken language, he could pass for an Afghan. He might have made it, if one guerrilla at a highway checkpoint in Ghazni province hadn't searched the car carefully enough to find Freckhaus's hidden French passport.