Free Range International

Security incident rates around Afghanistan are skyrocketing and this year it appears that Jalalabad is, for the first time,  going to get its fair share of attention.  This unfortunate fact is forcing outside the wire implementers to spend an inordinate amount of time tea drinking and jaw jacking with various local officials and [...]

A few days ago I was invited back to The Alyona Show to talk about tribal militias.  You can see Alyona now during these interviews,  but I still ended up looking all over the place like Stevie Wonder.  No idea why I do that… it sure is distracting.  Alyona  and I [...]

The Powerline Blog has a post this morning on a surprising honest review in the Washington Post of the new book Necessary Secrets. From the Powerline post:
“The review is by Leonard Downie, Jr., who was the Post’s executive editor until 2008. Downie is obviously uneasy with Schoenfeld’s view that editors and reporters at the New [...]

OPM stands for “Other Peoples Money” and our politicians are getting so good at spending it they are currently spending OPM which OP have not even earned yet.  Conventional wisdom is that having access to unlimited funds would be a good thing for a military engaged in extended combat operations, but the exact opposite [...]

Editors Note:   A hat tip with many many thanks goes out to Tim of Panjwayi, the country manager of Team Canada for providing the detailed report and pictures from the 5 May attack in Zaranj.
The fighting season is rapidly ramping up to make this the bloodiest yet, which makes it the perfect time [...]

It has been a long time since we have seen a crazy contractor story from Afghanistan.   This story, about reckless security contractors,  popped up in the news yesterday, saying “…Private Afghan security guards protecting NATO supply convoys in southern Kandahar province regularly fire wildly into villages they pass, hindering coalition efforts to build local [...]