Middle East, Afghan Withdrawal | featured news

Afghanistan will hold its next presidential election on April 5, 2014, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, had denied speculation that security problems and the exit of foreign troops that year would delay the poll.

Nearly two years after President Barack Obama ordered 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to tamp down the escalating Taliban violence, the last of those surge troops have left the country, U.S. officials said Thursday.

It was nearly 2 a.m. when U.S. Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time....

Officials say the US mission in Afghanistan will not change in the wake of an American soldier's attack on civilians, and troops are still on course to hand over security control to Afghans by the end of 2014.

Sen. John McCain said Sunday the Obama administration is taking an unnecessary risk in drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he will withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by year's end and a total of 33,000 by the summer of 2012.

President Barack Obama has made a final decision on his plan for a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and will announce it in a primetime address to Americans on Wednesday, the White House said on Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday there would be no hasty U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Washington expected the same from its allies.

Perhaps only a “handful” of U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan in 2011, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.