Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections in eight years suffered from violence and chaos Saturday, with a multitude of attacks killing at least 3 people, key election workers failing to show up and many polling stations staying open hours later than scheduled to handle long lines of voters. Problems surrounding the elections — already three years overdue — threaten to compromise the credibility of polls which an independent monitoring group said were also marred by incidences of ballot stuffing and intimidation by armed men affiliated with candidates in 19 of...

A gap is growing between Washington and Seoul over an inter-Korean military pact that Washington worries might weaken South Korea’s defenses against a North Korea attack. South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed discontent when she spoke to him after Seoul outlined plans to sign a military agreement with Pyongyang at the third inter-Korean summit in September. Pompeo’s concern over Seoul’s military agreement with Pyongyang comes as relations cool between South Korea and the United States...

When Afghans cast ballots Saturday in parliamentary elections viewed as a crucial test run for the presidential vote, it will be a shrinking number of voters that braves the tide of Taliban and Islamic State violence. For the first time since a U.S.-led invasion forced the Taliban from power in 2001, elections won't be held across Afghanistan. Residents of an entire province won't go to the polls because the country's security forces can't protect polling stations there. Ghazni, the seventh most populous of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces at 1.3 million people, won’t be the only disenfranchised area. After...

Peaceniks in Afghanistan heaved a sigh of relief, with subdued optimism, when in November last year Col Chris Kolenda, an Afghan war veteran, boarded a Doha-bound plane, along with Robin Raphel for a dialogue with the Talibans – an experimental diplomacy sans formality, aimed at termination of the 17-year war in Afghanistan, a disastrous gamble for the US. Hi-fi strategic and diplomatic experts in the US, who ridiculed the move, have now chosen a disquieting quietitude as the effort bears distinct signs of an unprecedented triumph. Although the move was never...

Pakistan's embattled Ahmadiyya minority enjoyed a brief moment of hope earlier this month when one of its own, a U.S.-based Princeton economist, was appointed to an economic advisory council. But the backlash from Islamic hard-liners, which led newly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan to quickly rescind the appointment under political pressure, has only underscored the Ahmadis' fraught position in the conservative, Muslim-majority country. Ahmadis believe another Islamic prophet, Ahmad, appeared in the 19th century, a view at odds with...

South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivered a message from Kim Jong Un to U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday, confirming the North Korean leader's commitment to "complete denuclearization." Moon, who is scheduled to deliver his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, was meeting with Trump on the sidelines to brief him on his recent summit in Pyongyang with Kim, an event that has revived U.S.-North Korea talks. Trump, who a few weeks earlier canceled U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's trip to North Korea, citing...

It’s known as the “Hermit Kingdom,” the world’s most isolated country, run by a crazed, totalitarian dynasty. But North Korea maintains embassies in nearly 50 nations — including Algeria and Zimbabwe — and could emerge swiftly as a normalized global power if nuclear talks with South Korea and the United States play out the right way. And that’s a problem. The North’s embassies have long been used not for traditional diplomacy but for illicit activities, including blackmail, cybercrime and drug trafficking. U.S. analysts warn that it’s a pipe dream to think they can...