Leaflets are a standard tool used by the U.S. and coalition forces to disseminate information about looming offensives and to persuade Afghans to turn away from the Taliban and other groups.
America and its allies, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are facing the looming spring offensive with worrying disunity.
WASHINGTON — In an unusual public conversation about Afghanistan on Thursday, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton went to some lengths to depict a looming coalition offensive around Kandahar as not a full-fledged military assault, but, in Mr. Karzai's words, "a process".
Anxiety is growing over increased tensions and reports of a looming military offensive by the Saudi-led coalinion in the city of Hodeidah.
With an offensive looming in Kandahar, the immediate US focus is on beating back the Taliban in the south, keeping Pakistan's tribal belt under pressure, strengthening the Afghan government's future negotiating position, and ensuring that "Afghanisation" will work sufficiently well to allow the troops to leave.
Ukraine is imposing martial law in areas "subject to Russian aggression" after President Petro Poroshenko said that his country's intelligence services had uncovered evidence of a looming Russian ground offensive.
The looming prospect of the offensive is already dividing the interim government.
As the regime's offensive loomed last month, the US said it would not intervene, thereby abandoning the "de-escalation zone" it helped create last year and giving Russian bombers and Syrian forces free rein.
Loyalists are still holding out in Gaddafi's birthplace of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, though there are signs a new offensive may be looming there.
Halloween is still two months away, but there's already a horribly offensive new costume looming on the horizon. .
