The Afghan president said a deadly raid on a village by American and Afghan commandos has put new strain on relations with the United States and promised Thursday to punish those responsible.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (AP) – A suspected American missile bombarded a village deep inside Pakistani territory Wednesday, officials said, marking what appears to be the first time the U.S. has struck beyond the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

President–elect Barack Obama has suggested more troops are needed in Afghanistan and has called for a more regional approach, even including Iran. He also reinforced the notion that Osama bin Laden is this nation's top target.

The hard truth is that our role in Afghanistan must change –– and more troops might not be the only answer.

BEIJING (AP) – China said Tuesday it would not send any troops to Afghanistan _ rejecting recent speculation that Beijing might support the international coalition there.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghan and coalition forces captured an insurgent leader in eastern Afghanistan, and in a separate operation 10 militants were killed in a firefight, the U.S. military said Saturday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan –– The Humvee sped along the dry riverbed, kicking up clouds of dust. But al–Qaida–linked militants –– not American soldiers –– were behind the wheel.

On the international front, things are no easier for President–elect Barack Obama than they are on the front lines of the economic crisis that he vows to ameliorate first.

His priorities are Iraq and Afghanistan, complicated entanglements that were discussed –– if at all –– with glib simplicity in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. It may turn out that leaving Iraq is going to be easier than the calamities we confront when we turn our attention, as the president–elect likes to say, back to Afghanistan.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN (AP) – An airstrike in northwest Afghanistan killed 13 Taliban militants and seven civilians Thursday, Afghan officials said, a day after President Hamid Karzai demanded a halt to civilian casualties in U.S.–led coalition operations.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AP) ––Afghanistan's government is looking at ways to engage tribes in the fight against insurgents, a similar tactic to the one that helped reduce violence in Iraq, the new chief of U.S. Central Command said Thursday.

WECH BAGHTU, Afghanistan (AP) ––The Afghan president on Wednesday demanded that President–elect Barack Obama put an end to civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people — nearly all of them women and children.

In a war where information can be more powerful than massed forces, the cellphone is a weapon. Insurgents the world over use cellphones to transmit messages, record photos and videos, and sometimes just to chat. They can record video of an attack, and transmit that video within a minute. U.S. and other technologically adept forces use machines to target cell phones.

This is no secret. Not to the enemy, at least.

In a war where information can be more powerful than massed forces, the cellphone is a weapon. Insurgents the world over use cellphones to transmit messages, record photos and videos, and sometimes just to chat. They can record video of an attack, and transmit that video within a minute. U.S. and other technologically adept forces use machines to target cell phones.

This is no secret. Not to the enemy, at least.

Both candidates in the U.S. presidential election have bought the questionable argument that the war in Afghanistan needs to be salvaged for the “war on terror” to succeed. On top of that, to accomplish this rescue, they both have called for an Iraq–like surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan beyond the 8,000 more that President Bush is planning to inject into the country next year. McCain then goes even farther and says, “Senator Obama calls for more troops, but what he doesn't understand, it's got to be a new strategy, the same strategy that he condemned in Iraq, that's going to have to be employed in Afghanistan.”

Of course, Obama has never condemned the U.S strategy in Iraq, but has merely correctly stated that the surge was only one of many factors that lowered the violence there. In fact, during 2005, the U.S. had as many troops in Iraq as it did during the 2007/2008 surge and violence increased. So even Obama might be giving too much credit to the higher U.S. troop levels.

Road from Kabul to Jalalabad
20 October 2008

Afghanistan is like time traveling. Vast expanses of rugged landscape, mostly unadorned by man–made structures, all framed by stories of savagery and conquest, create a picture of forever. A sense that human and geologic changes occur at nearly the same pace. Many of the people remain arguably “pre–historic” in the sense that illiterate people do not chronicle their knowledge and experience into writing or durable art. Moving around the countryside, a man could half expect to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex come stomping over a ridge.

Gen. David Petraeus, the new head of the U.S. Central Command, has said he expects the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan to get worse before it gets better. On a recent morning's evidence, he is right. At 8 a.m., Gayle Williams, from the Christian charity Serve Afghanistan, was killed on her walk to work. Two men dismounted from a scooter, shot her and drove off.

Williams worked with disabled Afghans to whom, Taliban militants claim, she was proselytizing. The charity flatly denies this. What is certainly true is that she was killed because she worked for a Christian charity, and the attack reflects a widening campaign by the Taliban to target foreign civilians. In August, three women aid workers, including a British citizen, and their Afghan driver, were killed in an ambush near Kabul. Now, the Taliban have struck in Kabul itself, illustrating just how dangerous all Afghanistan has become.

WASHINGTON –– Military success is often rewarded by the opportunity and honor of succeeding –– or failing –– on an even larger stage.

By some accounts, Gen. David Petraeus –– savior of Baghdad, deliverer of Anbar –– preferred a quieter European command as his next step toward becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Instead, he was put in charge of Central Command, covering the Wild West of the world, from pirates off the Horn of Africa to Uzbek thugs in South Waziristan. It is the site of two American wars and the home base of the global jihadist revolt. It is also the region from which the next 9/11–style attack on America, if it arrives, is likely to come.

The London Sunday Times reported October 12 that President George W. Bush is planning on announcing an Iraq–style surge of U.S. military forces to Afghanistan after the presidential election next month.

According to the Times’ report, the plus–up in American troops could number as many as 10,000. The plan for a surge, of course, mirrors the effort undertaken by President Bush and General David Petraeus in Iraq beginning in early 2007. The security situation in Afghanistan has been steadily deteriorating for more than a year, and Bush is planning to address that problem with a multi–faceted approach that will utilize all the elements of national power.

The Times quotes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen as saying, “The trends across the board are not going in the right direction. It has been very, very tough fighting this year and it will be tougher next year unless we [develop] a way to get at all aspects of the challenge.”

The Wilds, Afghanistan

Since leaving the British embed, I’ve gone unilateral. I flew back and forth between Kandahar and Lashkar Gah, drove around and talked with people down south, then flew up to Kabul. In Kabul, I met Tim Lynch and Shem Klimiuk (a retired USMC and ex–Aussie paratrooper, respectively), and we drove in an unarmored truck east to Jalalabad. The canyon–filled drive would be dangerous even if there was no war, but there is a war – a rapidly growing one — and Tim pointed out burnt spots on the road where ambushes had occurred. I was unarmed, and counting on the military experience of my two guides as well as their combined seven years experience in Afghanistan. In the weeks that I would spend with Tim and Shem, we drove more than a thousand miles up and down Afghan roads without the slightest drama, except that Tim scares me with his driving. If you are rich and want the adventure of a lifetime, contact Tim Lynch. You might die. But if you live, you’ll come back with a new perspective on Afghanistan.

How is it that we find ourselves unable to dispatch the Taliban seven years after their downfall? Winning in Afghanistan requires us to understand the changed nature of the war we are fighting and to adapt our strategy appropriately. Simply killing militants is not enough.

The war in Afghanistan is no longer purely a counterterrorism effort against al Qaeda and the senior Taliban leadership. It bifurcated long ago, and its second branch is a counterinsurgency against a range of groups who are flouting both the central government and the traditional authority of village and tribal elders and moderate mullahs. Often well funded by the Taliban or other enemies of the Afghan government and the coalition, and sometimes incorporating foreign fighters, these groups use money and guns to recruit from the vast pool of illiterate young men who see only continued poverty in the village and tribal status quo. The militants find their opportunity in the unraveling of the social and economic fabric since the Soviet invasion.

Against this shifting alliance of convenience between well–funded extremists and local malcontents, the Afghan government is fighting for its life. Historically decentralized, Afghanistan is a polyglot state made up of myriad ethnic groups and tribes. The present collapse from within, therefore, will not likely be defeated from the top down. While building up the central government is important, that effort will be in vain without a complementary effort to build systems and institutions at the local level, which can eventually be connected to the national government.

Here's one presidential campaign promise you can believe. Come early next year, there will be more American troops in Afghanistan, fighting an ever more critical and difficult war.

Sen. Barack Obama has vowed as much, and so has Sen. John McCain. Both candidates, in fact, want troop increases in Afghanistan that are even larger than what the Bush administration is belatedly proposing.

I left embed with British forces in Kandahar, and flew to Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand Province. Helmand is the biggest opium source of the world today. I write these words from Nangarhar, where bin Laden had made his home.