Afghanistan
President Barack Obama made a symbolic trip to Afghanistan on Tuesday, arriving on the first anniversary of the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to sign an agreement with President Hamid Karzai that marks a transition in the war while committing the U.S. to another decade of economic and military aid. – Wall Street Journal
Read the President’s address to the nation as delivered.
A new Pentagon report paints a mixed picture of the war in Afghanistan, describing the insurgency as capable of replacing battlefield losses and launching high-profile attacks, even as it has lost territory to U.S. and Afghan forces. – Washington Post
Download a copy of the report in PDF format here.
Osama bin Laden was devising a strategy for overthrowing Afghan President Hamid Karzai and controlling Afghanistan once the U.S. left the country, said a former U.S. official familiar with the cache of notes and letters that were seized last year in the raid on the terrorist leader’s compound. – Los Angeles Times
Scores of Afghans launched an anti-American protest in Afghanistan on Tuesday over the killings of three children during a gun battle between U.S.-led forces and Taliban insurgents. – Washington Post
Less than two hours after President Obama left Afghanistan airspace on Wednesday, explosions shook the capital and the Interior Ministry said a suicide attacker had exploded a large bomb at the gates of a compound used by foreigners in the east of Kabul, killing seven Afghans. – New York Times
Thousands of tons of military equipment intended for the Afghan army and police is stranded in Pakistan, which for months has refused to reopen ground supply routes for NATO convoys despite high-level U.S. pressure, a new Pentagon report says. – LA Times’ World Now
Afghanistan’s security chief has announced that a top-ranking member of the Afghan Taliban has been captured and killed in Pakistan along with 25 other militia members for seeking to resume peace talks. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The war in Afghanistan has dragged on for nearly a decade in large part because Washington has employed a strategy that necessitated a “hard slog,” America’s top general said Tuesday – DOTMIL
With two years to go until U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, local government corruption and border-security issues with Pakistan remain the biggest risks to a successful American withdrawal, two top administration officials said Tuesday. – DEFCON Hill
Reaction to President Obama’s unannounced trip to Afghanistan came in from Capitol Hill and the Pentagon on Tuesday. Here’s what some members of Congress were saying – National Journal
Josh Rogin reports: The Obama administration said Tuesday it is involved in ongoing consultations with various Taliban officials, but said that a long-negotiated deal to transfer five senior Taliban commanders out of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay is “on hold” indefinitely. – The Cable
Editorial: It’s good to see Mr. Obama emerge from his self-imposed Tora Bora, even if the reason is his campaign’s desire to play up his foreign policy record. April was a bloody month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 41 killed in action, and the troops need to know their commander still supports them. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Shaida Abdali writes: Indeed, as the tragedy of 9/11 demonstrated, the cost of staying the course in Afghanistan is far lower than the cost of prematurely abandoning the country. It is reassuring to the Afghan people and the world that Afghanistan and the United States have finally reached a solid consensus — albeit with many disagreements and bumps in the relationship along the way — on their specific sovereign roles and responsibilities in securing Afghanistan now and into the future, and working toward a safe world and a stable region free from the threats of terrorism and extremism. – Foreign Policy
Max Boot writes: Obama remains the master of projecting an air of serious, cerebral centrism—at least when he is not in full Republican-bashing campaign mode. And he was not at Bagram. He was at his best, making a deeply ambivalent policy—a policy at war with itself—seem like the only way to go. – Commentary’s blog, Contentions
Pakistan
A year after Osama bin Laden’s death, there is still anger among Pakistanis over the secret raid carried out by Navy SEALS on a compound near here. And some don’t believe he’s dead. – USA Today
Reza Jan writes: While the ruling is a positive development for Pakistan in terms of furtherance of the democratic process and the strengthening of a historically weak judiciary in Pakistan, it does not bring closure to the issue of Gilani’s status or Zardari’s corruption charges. It complicates the political debate in Pakistan in an election year and possibly delays and complicates finalization of agreements with the U.S. on key bilateral issues. Where the dust settles remains to be seen, but what is clear is that the ruling complicates far more issues than it clarifies. – Foreign Policy
China
Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled de facto house arrest last month and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy, left the diplomatic compound on Wednesday to seek medical treatment after receiving assurances from China’s government that he would be treated humanely, U.S. officials said. – Washington Post
The attention on the daring escape by blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng may undermine his desire to remain in China as it has further burnished his reputation at home and prompted an intensified national media crackdown. – Wall Street Journal
Limited military talks between China and the United States — an arena in which the two sides view each other with mounting unease — open here on Wednesday as a prelude to a wider-ranging economic and strategic dialogue between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and their Chinese counterparts. – New York Times
The dramatic escape from unlawful house arrest by blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the ongoing investigation into former Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai have presented China’s rulers with twin crises with a common theme: corrupt and abusive behavior by local party bosses and security officials operating with impunity in their fiefdoms far from the capital. – Washington Post
The office of Vice President Joe Biden overruled State and Justice Department officials in denying the political asylum request of a senior Chinese communist official last February over fears the high-level defection would upset the U.S. visit of China’s vice president, according to U.S. officials. – Washington Free Beacon
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in China on Wednesday for top-level talks that risk being upstaged by the fate of a blind dissident whose supporters say is under U.S. protection in Beijing after escaping house arrest. – Reuters
Chen’s predicament — his improbable flight to hoped-for freedom — has thrilled the many Chinese who are savvy enough to get around Internet censorship to learn about it. And it has reaffirmed for his supporters the qualities they have long admired: Chen displays a determination for upholding the law while exuding a charisma that reassures those around him. – Associated Press
Editorial: The Supreme Court has referred Wu Ying’s case back to a court in eastern Zhejiang province for retrial. While some damning piece of evidence about Ms. Wu’s alleged fraud could yet surface, the death penalty is a brutish verdict for most “economic” crimes, especially in a legal system as shaky as China’s. If in the end Ms. Wu takes the blame for the problems inherent in China’s financial system, hopes for reform will be on the chopping block too. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
East Asia
North Korea has sent out jamming signals since Saturday in an apparent attempt to disrupt civilian and military air and ground traffic in South Korea, forcing 252 commercial flights to switch off their global positioning devices, officials here said on Wednesday. – New York Times
Editorial: The deal nevertheless is a welcome step toward removing a major irritant in U.S.-Japanese relations, and strengthening an alliance that both countries need more than ever. – Washington Post
Southeast Asia
With a standoff between Philippine and Chinese ships under way in a disputed corner of the South China Sea, senior leaders from the United States and the Philippines have reaffirmed their longstanding commitment to mutual defense. – New York Times
The United Nations human rights office called on Cambodia on Tuesday to carry out a full investigation into the killing of an anti-logging activist and to ensure the safety of witnesses to the crime in which a policeman was also shot dead. – Reuters
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi took a historic oath on Wednesday to join a parliamentary system crafted by the generals who locked her away for much of her long struggle against dictatorship, ushering in a dramatic new political era. – Reuters
David Scott Mathieson and Benjamin Zawacki write: The best U.N. message to President Thein Sein would be one of encouragement: finish the job begun in May last year to ensure that all political prisoners in Burma are identified and set free. – Wall Street Journal Asia (subscription required)
Iran
An American advocacy group that has successfully pushed to economically isolate Iran through sanctions and business boycotts opened a new front in that effort on Tuesday, seeking to pressure the International Monetary Fund to withdraw all its holdings in Iran’s central bank or to suspend Iranian membership. – New York Times
President Obama Tuesday beefed up his sanctions policy against Syria and Iran, giving the U.S. Treasury the ability to crack down harder on foreign firms and individuals who violate existing measures. – Washington Times
Iran is optimistic about talks with world powers about its nuclear program but it will never give up its right to the peaceful use of atomic energy, a senior Iranian official said on Wednesday. – Reuters
Robert Bernstein, Irwin Cotler, and Stuart Robinowitz write: Silence is not a moral option when states threaten genocide—especially when they are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons and boast that they can bring about a holocaust in a matter of minutes. – Wall Street Journal (subscription reuired)
Syria
Hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to feed their families in the parts of Syria hardest hit by violence, activists and aid workers say, with access to food cut off by ruined infrastructure, rocketing prices and, say some, security forces who steal and spoil food supplies. – Washington Post
The top United Nations peacekeeping official said Tuesday that Syria remained troubled by appalling violence more than two weeks into the first deployment of cease-fire monitors there and that his organization had recruited only about half of the 300-member contingent he hoped to station in the country. – New York Times
Violence hit two Syrian provinces on Tuesday with a rights group reporting 10 civilians dead in an army mortar attack and 12 soldiers killed in a firefight with rebel gunmen as U.N. monitors sought to shore up a flimsy ceasefire. – Reuters
A rebel ambush in northern Syria killed 15 security force members on Wednesday, including two colonels, as fighting flared in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. – Reuters
More than 34 children allegedly have been killed in Syria since a shaky truce between President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces and opposition groups began on April 12, a U.N. envoy said on Tuesday. – Reuters
The United Nations is accelerating deployment of unarmed observers to Syria to ensure all 300 are on the ground by the end of May to monitor a shaky U.N.-backed ceasefire, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said on Tuesday. – Reuters
FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly and Policy Director Robert Zarate write: Indeed, not only Damascus and Tehran, but also America’s allies and partners throughout the world, are waiting and watching to see whether the Obama administration and Congress will truly side with the Syrian people and show resolve against Assad. – The Weekly Standard Blog
Egypt
At least six people were killed in clashes that broke out early Wednesday at demonstrations outside the Egyptian Defense Ministry, the Health Ministry said. – Washington Post
In the wake of the Arab Spring, Egyptian authorities are acting on a wave of anger over the perceived wrongs of the ousted regime and investors and companies associated with it, like Noubaria. Dozens of businesses—from commercial retailers to cement mixers to mining firms—face investigations and courts have ordered at least three companies to be renationalized years after they were privatized. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Saudi Arabia frets that Egypt, its strongest Arab ally and a major recipient of Saudi funding, is falling under what it sees as the baleful influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. – Reuters
Libya
For more than a week, armed men have prevented workers from entering the headquarters of one of Libya’s leading oil producers, claiming they had protected the company and deserved compensation for it, local oil officials say. The conflict, which has so far not affected Libya’s oil output, highlights the brittle nature of Libya’s oil recovery. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
French President Nicolas Sarkozy purportedly negotiated a “secret” atomic assistance accord with the former regime of Muammar Qadhafi in exchange for the 2007 discharge of six medical workers imprisoned by Libya – Global Security Newswire
Libyans began registering on Tuesday to vote in June elections for a national assembly, as the country prepared for its first free polls following the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. – Reuters
Libya said on Tuesday it would complete its investigation into Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, within weeks for crimes including murder and torture, and asked the International Criminal Court once again to hold off ordering his surrender. – Reuters
The mysterious drowning of Muammar Gaddafi’s former oil boss in Vienna has shaken friends and colleagues, who suspect he was murdered by enemies – who knew he couldn’t swim and had reason to want him silenced. – Reuters
Gulf States
Riot police firing tear gas and stun grenades routed protesters in Bahrain’s capital on Tuesday as the government came under mounting international pressure to release jailed leaders of last year’s uprising. – Reuters
Human Rights Watch urged Bahrain on Tuesday to immediately free leaders of last year’s uprising after an appeals court ordered a retrial, raising pressure for farther-reaching gestures to defuse resurgent street protests. – Reuters
Kuwaiti riot police used batons and armored trucks to disperse a group of about 200 stateless protesters on Tuesday, the latest rally by descendants of mainly desert nomads seeking improved rights in the oil-exporting Gulf state. – Reuters
Yemen
Suspected al Qaeda-linked gunmen killed a Yemeni man working for Total on Tuesday and wounded a Frenchman and another Yemeni employee of the French oil group, a Total security official said – Reuters
Iraq
The number of civilians killed in violence in Iraq rose slightly in April, according to government figures released on Tuesday. – Reuters
Israel
Tzipi Livni, who recently lost the leadership of the centrist Kadima Party and her position as leader of the opposition, resigned from the Israeli Parliament on Tuesday but said that she was not quitting public life. – New York Times
An Israeli military commander who ordered an air strike against a Gaza Strip home in 2009, killing 21 members of a family that was fleeing fighting in the area, will not face criminal charges, a military prosecutor announced Tuesday. – LA Times’ World Now
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on Tuesday entered their third week of a hunger strike to protest jail conditions and the practice of holding some suspects in administrative detention without charges or trial. – LA Times’ World Now
Over the past four decades, the national religious camp has provided both the ideology and the manpower behind Israel’s controversial West Bank settlements. More recently, however, it has trained its sights on a different, but no less combustible target: Israel’s string of mixed cities, where Jews and Arabs live side-by-side. – Financial Times
Ukraine
The United States called for the release of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Tuesday, joining European leaders in condemning the conditions of her imprisonment amid allegations that she was beaten. – Reuters
United States of America
Republican Mitt Romney said Tuesday that it was “totally appropriate” for President Obama to claim credit for taking out Osama bin Laden a year ago but that his decision to politicize a unifying event for the country was not. – Associated Press
Mario Loyola writes: The most remarkable thing about Rubio’s emerging foreign-policy vision is its hopefulness. He is essentially an optimist, always willing to see the glass half full. Paradoxically, that’s part of what makes him a realist when it comes to the imperative of American leadership abroad. The world isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than it would have been without us. And it could be much better still — but it won’t be without us. – National Review Online
Cuba
After controlling its citizens’ comings and goings for five decades, Cuba appears on the verge of a momentous decision to end many travel restrictions, with one senior official saying a “radical and profound” change is weeks away. – Associated Press
West Africa
This onetime model of African stability remained in a precarious state on Tuesday as the new military junta fought back an attempted countercoup by loyalist troops and asserted victory by day’s end. – New York Times
Islamist group Boko Haram released a video late on Tuesday celebrating its bombing of a Nigerian newspaper and warning of more attacks on local and foreign media if they published reports that were biased to the sect or insulting to Islam. – Reuters
Nigerian forces raided the hideout of Islamist militants in Kano on Tuesday, killing the suspected mastermind of an attack on Christian worshippers, in a gun battle that lasted several hours in the main northern city. – Reuters
East Africa
Tens of thousands of South Sudanese are trapped in a conflict over oil and territory between their newly independent country and their northern neighbor, Sudan – Washington Post
South Sudan alleged that Sudan is continuing its aggression against its neighbor and preventing a peaceful resolution to the countries’ conflict over oil-transit fees and land, as Sudan reportedly launched fresh attacks on a key oil region at the border of the two countries. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
The UN Security Council is putting the finishing touches to a resolution that could lead to sanctions on Sudan and South Sudan, despite Russian and Chinese reservations. – Financial Times
After al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels pulled out of the capital last year, the United States has stepped up efforts to train Ugandan soldiers who will be part of the push by AMISOM to take more territory outside the capital. – Reuters
A suicide bomber killed three Somali lawmakers on Tuesday at a hotel in the central town of Dusamareb, where legislators visiting from the capital were meeting, local authorities said. – Reuters
