(WASHINGTON POST) — The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai’s administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials. The payments are long-standing in many [...]

(ANTIWAR.COM) — Though one would have expected that the massive release of some 92,000 classified documents Sunday underscoring just how poorly the war is going would have changed some minds, the Obama Administration has gotten its way once again, with the House of Representatives approving the $59 billion emergency funding bill to keep the war [...]

(SPIEGEL ONLINE) — Billions of dollars are being secreted out of Kabul to help well-connected Afghans buy luxury villas in Dubai. Amid concerns that the money could be the result of corruption, American politicians have temporarily cut off aid to the Afghan government. According to some estimates, since 2007, at least $3 billion (€2.4 billion) [...]

(CNN) — America’s top military commander in Afghanistan is unlikely to survive the fallout from remarks he made about colleagues in a magazine profile to be published Friday, according to a Pentagon source who has ongoing contacts with the general. Gen. Stanley McChrystal will likely resign Wednesday, the source said. McChrystal’s fate is expected to [...]

(RAW STORY) — A New York Times report announcing the US has found $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan has some observers wondering if the news is part of a public-relations effort to bolster support for the Afghanistan war as the mission’s death toll continues to climb. While the dollar estimate — $1 trillion [...]

(AP) — Kyrgyz mobs burned Uzbek villages and slaughtered their residents Sunday in the worst ethnic rioting this Central Asian nation has seen in 20 years, sending more than 75,000 Uzbeks fleeing across the border into Uzbekistan. Most of the Uzbek refugees were elderly people, women and children, and many had gunshot wounds, the Uzbek [...]

(BBC NEWS) — Kyrgyzstan’s interim government has asked Russia to help quell ethnic fighting in the southern city of Osh, in which 50 people have been killed.” We need the entry of outside armed forces to calm the situation down,” interim leader Roza Otunbayeva said.But Russia’s defence ministry told the BBC it had no plans [...]

(AP) — The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East signed a secret order last fall that set the stage for increased clandestine and covert operations against militants and other threats across the region, defense officials said Tuesday. Gen. David Petraeus signed an order in September authorizing Special Operations forces to deploy to allied [...]

(BIG GOVERNMENT) — Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody. At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. [...]

(SYDNEY MORNING HERALD) — The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, current and former counter-terrorism officials say. The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the [...]

(PRO PUBLICA) — State and Defense department officials took a tongue-lashing Friday, trying to explain to a Senate subcommittee how the government has poured $6 billion since 2002 into building an effective Afghan police force with disastrous results. The program, managed under a contract with DynCorp International, has faced challenges on every front, from recruitment [...]

(BBC NEWS) — Kyrgyzstan’s interim government says it will extend the US lease on a key air base, a day after the ousted president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, left the country. The deputy leader, Omurbek Tekebayev, said the agreement over Manas air force base – a logistics hub for Afghanistan – would extend for another year. via [...]

(ASIA TIME ONLINE) == Great moments in diplomatic timing are hard to distinguish when the practitioners are inscrutable entities. Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visits to China and Iran within the week rang alarm bells in Washington which were heard in the Oval Office of the White House. Washington lost no time signaling its displeasure. President [...]

(LONDON TIMES) — President Karzai’s security chiefs have demanded that America should hand over the gunmen behind a night raid in eastern Afghanistan that government investigators and the United Nations say killed at least eight schoolchildren. It was the Afghan Government’s most aggressive response yet to an alleged attack on civilians. But the US insisted [...]