Afghanistan

Afghan policeman among 12 killed KABUL, Afghanistan - At least 12 people were killed in bombings around Afghanistan on Saturday, including 10 policemen who died when a suicide bomber driving a motorcycle blew himself up in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, officials said. Kunduz provincial police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Husseini said the policemen, including the head of the provincial counterterrorism department and the traffic police chief, were killed at an intersection in Kunduz city.

ON MONDAY, President Obama hailed the pioneers who in 1848 first fought for women's rights at Seneca Falls, N.Y. On Wednesday, Obama's Pentagon sent America's female troops charging up Hamburger Hill, metaphorically speaking. Leon Panetta, the outgoing defense secretary, has decided that for the first time U.S. women troops will be eligible for front-line combat infantry or artillery jobs that have long been restricted to men - first by tradition and after 1994 by official Pentagon policy, according to multiple news accounts.

More American soldiers took their own lives last year than were killed in combat in Afghanistan. That startling statistic should intensify efforts to explain why so many suicides are occurring in the military. Even as that answer is being sought, the situation begs for more mental health counselors and efforts to encourage potentially suicidal soldiers to seek help. Recently obtained figures show there were 349 suicides in 2012 among active-duty troops, up from 301 the previous year.

As President Obama embarks on his second term, his foreign-policy strategy remains murky. Clearly, the president wants, and needs, to focus heavily on domestic problems. In his own words: "As we turn the page on a decade of war, it's time to do some nation-building here at home. " Granted. Yet - as events in Mali and Algeria showed last week - the world will not hibernate while America puts its own house in order. If allies and enemies believe Obama's top priority is to disengage from much of the world, the consequences for U.S. security interests will be dire.

LONDON - As international military operations continued in Algeria and Mali, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged NATO on Friday to be more innovative and flexible so it can keep "relentless pressure" on al-Qaeda and be able to respond to a broad range of future security threats. Panetta was speaking as officials were still trying to sort out details in the kidnapping and possible rescue effort of hostage in Algeria. He said NATO nations must work together to help other countries beef up their security and ensure that terrorists can't establish safe havens anywhere in the world.

Timbuktu, for most Americans, has been one of those exotic names one might hear in an old movie, or see on the pages of some night-stand novel conjuring dreamy images of a faraway, mystical place. But Timbuktu is real, and so is the war in which that region of the West African nation of Mali is embroiled. It is a conflict rooted in the war on terror in which the United States, appropriately, is taking a lesser role - having quit Iraq, and likely accelerating its withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"We wanted a clear message from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support democracy in Afghanistan," Fawzia Koofi, a lawmaker and human-rights activist, said this month. "It's the only alternative to Talibanization. " Her honesty revealed the plain truth, without official pieties and doublespeak: The United States is quitting Afghanistan, and the morning after it does, the Taliban will begin the reconquest of that tragic land. After 11 years, more than 2,000 Americans killed and 18,000 wounded, and $600 billion spent, what is perhaps the longest U.S. war is winding down.

WASHINGTON - The United States should keep a residual force of about 10,000 in Afghanistan after combat forces leave at the end of 2014, the Senate Republican leader said Monday after a series of meetings with military leaders in the country. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who led a congressional delegation to Afghanistan and Israel, expressed optimism about an 11-year war that now stands as the longest in American history, and the prospect of Afghans assuming a lead role in the fighting. "My observation about Afghanistan at this point is this is the first time I've left there with a sense of optimism," he told reporters in a conference call.

WASHINGTON - In a notably upbeat assessment of war progress, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday that the U.S.-led coalition has advanced to the "last chapter" of an 11-year struggle to ensure that Afghanistan can defend itself. The endgame to which Panetta referred is punctuated with uncertainty, beginning with doubts about whether the Afghan government can build legitimacy by credibly serving its population. Also in question is whether Afghan security forces will be capable of holding off the Taliban after international forces leave in 2014.

WASHINGTON - It's the same debate, the same numbers and practically the same plan, but the White House is working harder to keep troops in Afghanistan than it did in similar but failed discussions in Iraq in 2011. Security remains shaky in both war zones, but current and former U.S. officials say the Obama administration cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan after a dozen years of fighting and a continuing threat by al-Qaeda and its extremist Taliban allies. Defeating al-Qaeda and bolstering Afghan forces to prevent the terror network's return there has been a top priority for President Obama since he took office, while ending the war in Iraq was the fulfillment of a campaign promise.