Afghanistan >>

The election will mark the first time Afghans have changed their leader at the polls in modern history as Hamid Karzai’s dozen years in power end....

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series Continue reading... ...

About 12 million people are eligible to vote on Saturday in the first round of what it is hoped will be the country's first peaceful transfer of democratic power 11.47am BST Rob Taylor is in Mazer-i-Sharif for the Wall Street Journal. Mazar's famous Blue Mosque almost deserted on #afelex voting day. Normally packed on Sat pic.twitter.com/leWYUcF55Z People line up in Balkh district, where officials...

Carlotta Gall, former Afghanistan correspondent for The Times, stopped by the paper’s New York offices on Friday to talk about the response to her book, the coming elections in Afghanistan and the long-term effects of covering a war zone....

A reporter who was recently with Anja Niedringhaus and Kathy Gannon of The Associated Press, longtime fellow chroniclers of events in Afghanistan, reflects on the attack on them and the changing environment in the country....

Obama administration officials will closely watch this weekend’s election in Afghanistan, hoping that a successor to President Hamid Karzai will allow international troops to remain on the ground....

A Supreme Court decision and a foundering Mideast peace process made this a week for cynics to shrug their shoulders....

Scenes from around Afghanistan which is preparing to vote Saturday for a new president Continue reading... ...

A reminder if anyone needed it of the utter waste of life and talent caused by the war in Afghanistan The war in Afghanistan claimed the life of Anja Niedringhaus this morning and has left her long-time colleague, the respected Canadian reporter Kathy Gannon wounded. Continue reading... ...

AP photojournalist killed in Afghanistan produced work that went beyond the normal wire service, says a former colleague Anja Niedringhaus deserves to be remembered as one of the best photojournalists of the past two decades, and one of the most dedicated. We met in Sarajevo 20 years ago, during the war, when she was effectively my boss. A few years later I ended up managing her, but that didn't matter;...

Key facts, figures and candidates ahead of Saturday's nationwide poll to replace President Hamid Karzai as the Afghan leader Continue reading... ...

Ordinary Afghans vow to defy fraud, violence and intimidation to turn out in large numbers to choose Hamid Karzai's successor There has already been bloodshed and fraud on the campaign trail, and there will almost certainly be bombs and assassinations, voter intimidation, ballot-box stuffing and vote buying when Afghanistan goes to the polls on Saturday to choose a new president . But Afghans are vowing...

An Associated Press photographer was killed and a reporter was wounded on Friday when an officer opened fire while they were sitting in a car....

Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus has been shot dead in Afghanistan's violent east while covering preparations for the presidential election. A frequent contributor to the Guardian, here is a retrospective of her work, from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan to the London 2012 Olympics ...

One Associated Press photographer killed and another wounded after attack in Khost province on eve of presidential election An Afghan police officer has shot dead a foreign photographer and badly injured another in the country's violent east, as they were covering preparations for the country's presidential election. The man opened fire on Anja Niedringhaus and Kathy Gannon from the Associated Press...

Those hoping to see Afghanistan’s president slip into a quiet retirement may be disappointed in the months to come....

It is hard to resist the feeling that Afghans, responding to the chaos and opportunity of foreign intervention, have changed Could we make the Afghans more like us? That has been the question ever since the Americans and their allies went into Afghanistan 12 years ago, won a swift victory over al-Qaida and the Taliban, and then decided to consolidate that victory by making Afghanistan into a radically...

In terms of sheer numbers, April will be the most democratic month the world has ever seen as national elections take place in half a dozen countries with total electorates of more than one billion people in India, Afghanistan, Hungary, Indonesia, Algeria and Iraq ...

Peculiar alliances have exposed how the flawed political system undermines democracy....

Amid repeated Taliban attacks and a continuing war, Afghan presidential candidates step onto planes with guards carrying AK-47s, and rocket-propelled grenades are sometimes part of carry-on baggage....