In the News Afghan Blues

February 2, 2009

“The challenge of the next president is ... to put his hands around what do we do with this region as a whole.”
Professor Vali Nasr, Tufts University

"Dim and dismal," one expert says of the situation in Afghanistan, on the eve of Richard Holbrooke's visit to the region this week. The president's high-profile special envoy, aka "the Bulldozer," is famously tenacious, and will need to be if he's to make any headway in the region.

For a background report on what Ambassador Holbrooke is up against, check out The War Briefing, our recent report from the Afghan battlefront. The closing chapter, summarizing the film's sobering findings, is excerpted here.

Finally, for those interested in more on Holbrooke himself, there is a wealth of material on the Web site for our 1999 film, Give War a Chance, a fascinating exploration of how Vietnam shaped the foreign policy views of a generation of American leaders, Richard Holbrooke among them.