Wired has reported that a virus has hit the US drone fleet operating out of Creech Airbase in Nevada. This has not stopped the Predator and Reaper drones from operating in Afghanistan, West Asia and now also North Africa, the areas the US considers as “war zones” – a shadowy war in which the ratio of high valued targets to actual “kills” are now (2009-2010 figures) running at 1: 147.

Fahim Khan, of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, comments on the conjencture that the Pakistani security establishment finds itself in - under pressure from the US demanding action on fundamentalists (some of whom it is closely allied with), hardly any support for its actions from the people of Pakistan and a political establishment that is attempting to assert its independence. A Newsclick Production.

Cleverly, the Washington establishment seeks to reorder events so that it can take credit for things it did not do and pass on the blame for things it did do. President Barack Obama not only wants to share the Arab Spring's glory but, with the Group of Eight (G8) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wants to help shape its aftermath. On the other hand, Obama seeks to avert his eyes from the mess of Afghanistan and pay less heed to the desperate rants from President Hamid Karzai about the manufactured futility of his country.

Part II of Newclick's interview with Prof. Anuradha Chenoy of the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, SIS, JNU, on developments in Central Asia, as a pro-democracy uprising wave is in progress in West Asia.

The esteemed historian and novelist on how there is only one path for the United States in Afghanistan: withdrawal. The following talk was given on April 19 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the London Review of Books. Afghanistan now is at a critical stage.

Hours before boarding a flight out of Kabul, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide delivered a final warning Saturday as he wrapped up his two-year tenure as the top United Nations diplomat in Afghanistan.

Senior Journalist Sukumar Muralidharan talks about the restarting of India Pakistan talks in the context of the changing security situation in Afghanistan.

A New York jury has convicted the US-educated Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui of attempted murder for shooting at US forces while jailed in Afghanistan in 2008. None of the Americans were injured, but Siddiqui was shot and wounded while in US custody. Human rights groups have long alleged that Siddiqui was forcibly disappeared by Pakistani authorities in 2003 and interrogated and tortured at the behest of the United States. In her testimony, Siddiqui claimed to have been held in a US secret prison.

"We've been forgotten. Women no longer constitute a priority for our government or for the international community," Shinkai Karokhail, one of the few women members of the Afghan Parliament, confided in December. Worse than forgotten, Afghan women today are once again trampled upon, sacrificed. "It's a return to the leaden years," protests Shoukria Haïdar, president of the Negar Association-Support for Afghan women, on her way through Paris last week, in reference to the five years of the 1996-2001 Islamic Regime under the strict authority of Mullah Omar. Five years after having driven him from power, Westerners, with Americans in the lead, are courting him - Mullah Omar and his friends - in the name of "national reconciliation." Go figure!

The U.S. military's intelligence chief in Afghanistan sharply criticized the work of U.S. spy agencies there on Monday, calling them ignorant and out of touch with the Afghan people.