NATO launches air strikes against Misrata, Ajdabiya

NATO launched air strikes against Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's troops in the stricken port city of Misrata on Sunday after regime forces killed at least 11 people there over the weekend, rebels said.

Why is Korea divided?

The Soviet Union occupied the northern half of Korea after World War II ended in 1945.

Southern Korea was controlled by the United States.

The peninsula was formally split in two on 9 September 1948.

The political differences between the two rival states led to the outbreak of a horrific war in 1950.

Three years later, a cease-fire agreement ended the Korean War.

But the North Korea and South Korea have to this day never signed a peace treaty.

Who is the Taliban?

The Taliban (Pashto: طالبان ṭālibān, meaning "students"), also Taleban, is a Sunni Islamist political movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until it was overthrown in late 2001 during Operation Enduring Freedom. It has regrouped since 2004 and revived as a strong insurgencymovement governing local Pashtun areas and fighting a guerrilla war against the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the NATO-ledInternational Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The movement is primarily made up of members belonging to ethnic Pashtun tribes, along with volunteers from nearby Islamic countries such as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Arabs, Punjabis and others. It operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly around the Durand Line regions. U.S. officials say their headquarters is in or near Quetta, Pakistan, and that Pakistan andIran provide support, although both nations deny this.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, in hiding, leads the movement. Omar's original commanders were "a mixture of former small-unit military commanders and madrasah teachers,"while its rank-and-file was made up mostly of Afghan refugees who had studied at Islamic religious schools in Pakistan. The Taliban received valuable training, supplies and arms from the Pakistani government, particularly the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and many recruits from madrasas for Afghan refugees in Pakistan, primarily ones established by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam(JUI).

Although in control of Afghanistan's capital (Kabul) and most of the country for five years, the Taliban regime, which called itself the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", gained diplomatic recognition from only three states: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It has regained some amount of political control and acceptance in Pakistan's border region, but recently lost one of its key leaders, Baitullah Mehsud, in a CIA missile strike. However Pakistan has launched an offensive to force the Taliban from its territory.

The Taliban enforced one of the "strictest interpretation[s] of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world", but occasionally modifies its code of conduct. In mid-2009, it established an ombudsman office in northern Kandahar, David Kilcullen describes as a "direct challenge" to the ISAF.

What is the war in Afghanistan all about?

The War in Afghanistan is an ongoing coalition conflict which began on October 7, 2001, as the US military's Operation Enduring Freedom(OEF) that was launched, along with the British military, in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. The UK has, since 2002, led its own military operation, Operation Herrick, as part of the same war in Afghanistan. The character of the war evolved from a violent struggle against Al-Qaeda and its Taliban supporters to a complex counterinsurgency effort.

The first phase of the war was the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, to remove the safe haven to Al-Qaeda and its use of the Afghan territory as a base of operations for terrorist activities. In that first phase, U.S. and coalition forces, working with the Afghan opposition forces of the Northern Alliance, quickly ousted the Taliban regime. During the following Karzai administration, the character of the war shifted to an effort aimed at smothering insurgency, in which the insurgents preferred not to directly confront the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops, but blended into the local population and mainly usedimprovised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombings.

The stated aim of the invasion was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda members to be put on trial, to destroy the whole organization of Al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbor to Al-Qaeda. The Bush administration stated that, as policy, it would not distinguish between terrorist organizations and nations or governments that harbor them. The United Nations did not authorize the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was established by the UN Security Council at the end of December 2001 to secure Kabul and the surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. By July 23, 2009, ISAF had around 64,500 troops from 42 countries, with NATO members providing the core of the force. The NATO commitment is particularly important to the United States because it gives international legitimacy to the war.[30] The United States has approximately 29,950 troops in ISAF.[31]

The US and UK led the aerial bombing, in support of ground forces supplied primarily by the Afghan Northern Alliance. In 2002, American, Britishand Canadian infantry were committed, along with special forces from several allied nations, including Australia. Later, NATO troops were added.

The initial attack removed the Taliban from power, but Taliban forces have since regained some strength. Since 2006, Afghanistan has seen threats to its stability from increased Taliban-led insurgent activity, record-high levels of illegal drug production, and a fragile government with limited control outside of Kabul.

By the end of 2008, the Taliban had severed any remaining ties with al-Qaeda. According to senior U.S. military intelligence officials, there are perhaps fewer than 100 members of Al-Qaeda remaining in Afghanistan.[38] The Taliban can sustain itself indefinitely, according to a December 2009 briefing by the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan.[39]

On December 1, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he would escalate U.S. military involvement by deploying an additional 30,000 soldiers over a period of six months. He also proposed to begin troop withdrawals 18 months from that date. The following day, the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, cautioned that the timeline was flexible and “is not an absolute” and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, when asked by a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee if it is possible that no soldiers would be withdrawn in July 2011, responded, "The president, as commander in chief, always has the option to adjust his decisions."

On January 26, 2010, at the International Conference on Afghanistan in London which brought together some 70 countries and organizations, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told world leaders that he intends to reach out to the top echelons of the Taliban within a few weeks with a peace initiative. Karzai set the framework for dialogue with Taliban leaders when he called on the group's leadership to take part in a "loya jirga"—or large assembly of elders—to initiate peace talks.

So in plain terms ie mine:

Taliban is a government organization in Afghanistan and Al- Qaeda is an terrorist organization to which they support therefore the US and other countries want to remove the Taliban thus the war in Afghanistan began!

I want to know about Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (pronounced /ælˈkaɪdə/ al-KYE-də or /ælˈkeɪdə/ al-KAY-də; Arabic: القاعدة‎, al-qāʿidah, "the base"), alternatively spelled al-Qaida and sometimes al-Qa'ida, is an Islamist group founded sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless arm and a fundamentalist Sunni movement calling for global jihad.

Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, most notably, the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001. The US government responded by launching the War on Terror.

Characteristic techniques include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of different targets. Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement, who have taken a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, or the much more numerous "al-Qaeda-linked" individuals who have undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan or Sudan, but not taken any pledge.

Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from the foreign influences in Muslim countries, and the creation of a new Islamic caliphate. Reported beliefs include that a Christian-Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam, which is largely embodied in the U.S.-Israel alliance, and that the killing of bystanders and civilians is religiously justified in jihad.