2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report - Afghanistan
03 March 2011
Afghanistan produces approximately 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium. Poppy cultivation remained stable in 2010, but opium production decreased due to a blight that affected crop yields in high cultivation provinces. The United States estimated that Afghanistan cultivated 119,000 hectares of illicit opium poppy in 2010, which yielded a potential opium gum production of 3200 MT. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) also...
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Ex-Pentagon Adviser Says US Should Cut Afghan Aid
03 March 2011
By pumping more than $100 million into a hydropower plant, the United States sought to improve the lives of Afghans and win the hearts and minds of tribesmen and farmers who might otherwise turn to the Taliban insurgency. Instead, a prominent outside Pentagon adviser argues, the bungled boondoggle ended up funding the insurgents while doing little to help the United States end the war and bring troops home. The story of the Kajaki dam, the largest...
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Kidnapped Afghan Tells of Ordeal at the "Center of Al Qaeda"
03 March 2011
Abdul Khaliq Farahi’s kidnappers attacked fast, smashing into his car to stall it, seizing him and executing his driver as he tried to make a phone call. Within seconds, they were driving away to a hide-out just 20 minutes away. It was Sept. 23, 2008, and Mr. Farahi, the Afghan consul general in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, was driving home from work. His kidnapping was one of a series singling out foreign officials that included...
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International Meeting Agrees to Step up Afghan Political Push
03 March 2011
An international conference on Afghanistan agreed on Thursday to step up efforts to reach a settlement to the Afghan war by shifting toward a political rather than military approach to Afghanistan. "We want to rebalance the focus we had so far on the military approach," Michael Steiner, Germany's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who chaired the meeting, said. "... it does not suffice because there will be no military solution ... we need...
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Report on UK's Foreign Policy Approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan
03 March 2011
The report states that although the current international emphasis favours intense military pressure, aimed at defeating the insurgency, it is clear that military pressure alone is not enough to bring security and stability to Afghanistan. [...] The evidence presented to the Committee has suggested that the current full-scale and highly-intensive ISAF counter-insurgency campaign is not succeeding. [...] The Committee says that despite the significant...
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NATO Apologizes for Killing Nine Afghan Civilians
03 March 2011
NATO's top commander in Afghanistan apologized Wednesday for the accidental killing of nine Afghan boys and ordered attack helicopter crews to be briefed again on his directive for preventingcivilian deaths. Civilian casualties have long been a source of friction between the U.S.-led international force and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The president condemned the deaths, saying the victims were "innocent children who were collecting firewood...
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