KABUL, Afghanistan -- Senior American and Afghan officials held talks Saturday to try to iron out the details of a key pact signed a year ago that def...

The Afghan wife of a good friend called not long ago and asked if I'd accompany her to a wedding in Kabul. I wondered why she wasn't taking her husband. "Oh it is much too dangerous for an American but you would be OK," she exclaimed cheerily.

After going through 23 drafts, the United States and Afghanistan have at last inked a framework strategic partnership agreement to govern their collaboration past the promised 2014 withdrawal of foreign forces.

Having been in the country for the past decade and seized and imprisoned thousands of suspected fighters, the United States has an obligation to help the Afghan government establish a justice system that will treat them fairly. It will surely be blamed later if it doesn't.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- With a pact that still leaves a number of substantive, and potentially deal-breaking, issues to negotiate, the United States and...