Some officials say Herat frontier checkpoint giving Taleban a backdoor into Afghanistan. Islam Qala, a dusty border town that forms the gateway between Iran and Afghanistan, is a focus of concern for Afghan ...

Counsel will step in if Karadzic continues to boycott trial after it resumes in March. Judges in the Hague trial of Radovan Karadzic have appointed a standby counsel who will step in to represent the former Bosnian Serb leader if he continues to boycott his war crimes proceedings. ...

Orthodox leader at the centre of argument over whether the church is too involved in public life. An internet parody of the country’s Orthodox patriarch, in which he was shown using an obscenity to describe ...

Minorities say new religious curriculum places unfair emphasis on Shia Islam. Zuhair Jerjis and Ahmed Mohammed are both ten years old and often meet after school to play video games. Though they enjoy each other’s company, Ahmed wonders whether he will one day have to kill his friend. ...

Western and Afghan forces try to find out why an otherwise normal young man snapped and killed men he had worked with for months. The young man’s name was Gulbuddin and he came from Musa Qala, in the northern part of Helmand. ...

Former inmate describes how corrupt jail staff collude in sexual exploitation of female convicts. A former inmate of Kasapa central prison in Lubumbashi has claimed that rape and sexual abuse of female prisoners is widespread, leading to many women becoming pregnant and giving birth while in jail. ....

Majority seem relieved they will not have to take part in second round of voting. The news that Hamed Karzai had been declared the winner of Afghanistan’s troubled presidential election came as no surprise to most of his countrymen. ...

Former Bosnian Serb president released early from her sentence for war crimes. There was criticism this week over the warm welcome extended to convicted war criminal Biljana Plavsic on her return to Belgrade following her early release from a Swedish prison. ...

Governments of south Caucasus mostly left with a clear run despite allegations of repression. All across the region, opposition leaders complain of unfair conditions for political competition, and experts say the governments’ firm grip on power is impeding development. ...