This week marks the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by the US and its allies--and the country is in shambles and conflict rages. Award-winning journalist Jonathan Steele, who has reported from Afghanistan for thirty years, discusses how the United States has ignored the lessons from the Soviet occupation of that country. And he argues that the US needs to negotiate a settlement and exit entirely, rather than leaving advisors behind.

What is the US government's real agenda in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is it engaged in anything that contradicts its official alliance with Pakistan? And how big of a factor is natural resources in what the US war machine is doing? Kiren Chaudhry has gone to the region to investigate. In a conversation this past August, she characterized the US military/security effort as chaotic.

What is the US government's real agenda in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is it engaged in anything that contradicts its official alliance with Pakistan? And how big of a factor is natural resources in what the US war machine is doing? Kiren Chaudhry has gone to the region to investigate. She characterizes the US military/security effort as chaotic.

As Obama sends 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, crusader Malalai Joya says that the Afghan people should not have to choose between the evil of the US and Nato and the evil of the Taliban. In spite of assassination attempts and being suspended from parliament, Joya continues to speak out, as she did two weeks ago in Vancouver.

We all know that Obama is shifting the focus of US military intervention from Iraq to Afghanistan. What we don't all know is the history of Afghanistan and its tribes and its experiences in relation to empires like the British and the Russian. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould speak primarily about Afghan history pre-1960.