Joshua Foust

As Gen. David Petraeus takes over the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan, he is right to continue a strategy of counterinsurgency and to strengthen it with a plan that seeks to give local Afghan communities the means to defend themselves. However, both the recently announced local defense plan and the over-arching counterinsurgency of which it is a part take the wrong path to reducing violence in Afghanistan.
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The success of Operation Moshtarak, NATO's military offensive to seize the Taliban-controlled town of Marjah in Afghanistan's Helmand province, will be determined by how well coalition forces establish a functioning government now that the bulk of the actual fighting is over. NATO's plan, which it calls "government-in-a-box," should include a stable tax regime as an essential foundation for governance.
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What does it mean to "secure the people" of Afghanistan? Some of the U.S. government's best thinkers about defense policy and counterinsurgency have finally begun to consider this question. But although Iraq is vastly different from Afghanistan, there seems to be no end to "importing" lessons from Baghdad to Kabul: tribal militias, awakenings, and, most worryingly, a focus on cities. more

We can view the coverage of the Russo-Georgian Conflict as a situation in which traditional journalism has been crowded out by opinion journalism. more

Democratic elections usually rest on a few basic principles: a free and fair vote, an uncoerced selection of candidates, and an agreement by all parties to abide by the results. Afghanistan doesn't quite qualify for any of these. more

The cliché that you must "protect the population" in order to win a counterinsurgency has now become entrenched in conventional wisdom. This is especially so of the war in Afghanistan, where civilian casualties have become a deeply polarizing issue. But protecting the population requires knowing where it lives. Here, the Army's conventional wisdom fails. more

Since 2005, Kapisa Province has been the site of several waves of U.S. counterinsurgency operations. Each has been lauded as a success, yet the problems facing Kapisa remain, and in some cases are worse than before the operations began. Clearly, something needs fixing in the way the U.S. military measures and maintains its successes. more

KHOST PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Khost Province is one of the only places in Afghanistan where there are strong enough tribal identities for recently announced tribal militias, called Arbakai, to actually work. The one limitation to Arbakai, however, is that to use them effectively, you must understand the ground conditions. That's something the restrictions on movement in Khost Province make extremely difficult.
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KAPISA PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- Over scalding cups of tea, an elder said to me, "For two years you have come here and asked me the same questions. I like you, I like the French, but you people never learn." This elder was not hostile to America's goals in Afghanistan. Like others, he was just deeply frustrated by the way, for all our questions, we never seem to learn from our experiences. more

To discuss human rights in Central Asia without resorting to stereotype is a difficult prospect. The area's strategic value is unquestioned and has led some to turn the region's human rights record into a vehicle for promoting their own interests -- distorting reality in the process. What's more, the human rights picture varies significantly from country to country across Central Asia. more

There are many encouraging signs that Turkmenistan's new president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, will open his country to the outside world. Already, Berdymukhammedov has reversed some of the more puzzling of former dictator Niyazov's zany policies. This change of leadership represents a huge opportunity, of which the United States should take advantage. Offering fully normalized trade and diplomatic relations would open a remarkable possibility: reducing Russian dominance of South Caspian energy. more