A suicide bomber in Afghanistan on Tuesday killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, former president of Afghanistan and leader of the High Peace Council. Rabbani was in the process of negotiating an end to the war with the Taliban. The assassination is a devastating blow to the Afghan peace process, and the future of security in the region.

NATO airstrikes on Sunday targeting insurgents in Afghanistan. NATO says that nine people were killed, while Afghan officials put that number at 14. A senior NATO official issued a "heartfelt apology" for the bungled airstrike. Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai lashed at out NATO and the United States, saying this was their "final warning." Peter Galbraith, is a former U.N. Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan. He explores how these recent events will affect the future of what NATO and the United States are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan.

The burning of a Quran at a Florida church has set off a wave of violence in Afghanistan. Thousands of protesters mobbed the United Nations building in Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday. Seven U.N. workers were murdered, and protests against the United States raged in Kandahar over the weekend, killing dozens. President Obama and General David Petraeus condemned the Florida pastor’s actions. Including the U.N. workers, 24 people have died since protests began last Friday.

Today in Washington, the diplomatic world remembers Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke died on December 13th after suffering a torn aorta. He was 69. Since his death, Arnold Fields, the top auditor of reconstruction funds in Afghanistan, has resigned. Before doing so, he fired two of his top deputies. Are we facing a leadership vacuum in Afghanistan?

The West African country of Ivory Coast has been on the brink of civil war since incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo lost November’s democratically held elections to Alassane Ouattara, by 8 percent of the vote. With the backing of the nation’s army and much of its population, Gbagbo has refused the UN's ultimatum for a “last chance” to peacefully step down.

"They do give us bags of money. Yes, yes they do. It’s all the same. So let’s not make this an issue," Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted today, confirming a report in Saturday's New York Times revealing that Iran supplies a top Karzai aide with bags of cash.

The Times alleged that the Iranian government funneled between $1 million and $2 million to Karzai's chief-of-staff, Umar Daudzai, in plastic bags every other month. The story quoted a NATO official as saying that Iran is aggressively trying to undermine U.S. influence in Afghanistan.

Secret military documents released by WikiLeaks, and published in The New York Times yesterday, show that Pakistan's intelligence service has been aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan. These documents solidify what many Americans fighting the war, and those homeside have suspected and feared for some time. Peter Galbraith, former United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, looks more closely at the documents.

Senior Pakistani officials, led by Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, are in Washington today for talks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But there are some questions around who is really running the show.

The President's announcement of a link between alleged 'Christmas Bomber' Umar Farouk Abdullmutallab and al-Qaida in Yemen not only shed light on the real threat posed by international terror; it also raised awareness of the mobility of terror cells.  We're joined again by Peter Galbraith, former United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, as well as Paul Pillar, director of  the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and former deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Both come on to discuss security in the age of franchised terror.

A U.N.-backed election commission has determined that neither of the two leading candidates received a majority of votes. According to unnamed officials, President Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, has received 47 percent of the vote. That finding could result in a runoff between Karzai and his leading opponent, Abdullah Abdullah.

We speak with Ambassador Peter Galbraith to find out more about the election results. Until last month, he was the number two ranking official at the United Nations office in Kabul. He was abruptly recalled after pushing internally for the U.N. to take fraud charges in the Afghan elections more seriously. We're also joined by Alexander Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Peter Galbraith, the highest-ranking American working for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, is losing his job, allegedly for raising too many concerns about accusations of fraud in the recent Afghan presidential elections. He joins The Takeaway to discuss his side of the story ... and what more he thinks the U.N. could be doing to clean up elections there. (click through for the full interview transcript.)