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U.S. counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan are in a “perilous state” despite billions of dollars spent to combat the spread of drug production there, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko told Congress on Wednesday. [snip] Poppy cultivation hit a record level in 2013, with 209,000 hectares, or about 516,000 acres, devoted to growing the picturesque red flowers that provide the base ingredient for opiate drugs, including heroin, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. That’s a 36 percent increase over 2012.

The Afghan government said Thursday it will release 72 high-profile detainees, a decision that defies pleas by U.S. officials and deals a massive blow to U.S.-Afghan relations just as the two countries attempt to complete a long-term security agreement. U.S. officials say the prisoners pose a threat to both Afghan security and American servicemembers based here, claiming their exoneration proves not only the dysfunction of the Afghan judiciary, but also the government’s inability to cooperate on even the gravest matters.

Six American soldiers have died in a crash involving an aircraft in southern Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says. The cause of the crash in Zabul is unknown and an investigation is under way, Isaf said. Initial reports indicated there was "no enemy activity in the area" at the time of the incident, a short statement said. US defence department officials confirmed the victims´ nationalities. The deputy governor of Zabul province told the Associated Press news agency that a Nato helicopter had crashed in the remote district of Shajau. It was not clear if he was referring to...

President Obama’s brain trust on Afghanistan does not know much the U.S. spends on the war each year or the American cost in lost lives on the battlefield. This embarrassing lack of basic knowledge from State Department and Pentagon experts on Afghanistan at a House hearing Wednesday prompted even a Democrat to say he was stunned. The setting was the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The Issue: Afghanistan and the transition to fewer U.S. troops post-2014. The witnesses: James F. Dobbins, State’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Donald Sampler, assistant to the administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed on a cooperation pact with Iran, despite continuing to resist signing a security agreement with the U.S., Reuters reported. Karzai made the deal with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran Sunday. "Afghanistan agreed on a long-term friendship and cooperation pact with Iran," Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi said, according to Reuters. "The pact will be for long-term political, security, economic and cultural cooperation, regional peace and security."

Many of our Soldiers in Afghanistan are required to carry this paper in a pocket at all times. Troops are expected to memorize the talking points and cough them up to any journalists coming through. We decided to help headquarters spread their message. Many complaints about poor morale are coming from Afghanistan. Most troops are kept on base, where they undergo mindless inspections and even small ‘parades’, and of course rocket and mortar strikes. It has been estimated that in 2014, the cost to taxpayers to keep one troop in Afghanistan for one year will be more than $2 million....

“Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached a sobering record high in 2013,” said the UNODC. “According to the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey, cultivation amounted to some 209,000 hectares, outstripping the earlier record in 2007 of 193,000 hectares, and representing a 36 per cent increase over 2012.”

... "Said retired Army Col. Ken Allard, now a military analyst: “Call me crazy, but what on earth is the point of remaining there under these [rules of engagement], much less subjecting American soldiers to another set of restrictions that make sense only in proportion to your distance from the combat zone?”

‘You don’t understand how bad it is here’ The Marine told his father about training the Afghan police and described their chief as “a bad guy.” “They’re going to kill me here,” the son told his father. “They’re going to murder me inside my facility. These people are bad people, Dad.” “You people don’t understand how bad it is here,” he explained. “They don’t care about us. They don’t want us here. They said it to me. But we have to do what we’re told to do because we’re Marines.” Buckley Jr. described how he how he wasn’t scared about...

U.S. and Afghan officials reportedly have reached a tentative agreement on a critical security pact -- which would include President Obama writing a letter to the Afghan people acknowledging mistakes during the "war on terror." According to Reuters, an Afghan spokesman said Tuesday that Obama agreed to write the letter, to be presented with the draft security pact at a meeting of tribal elders later this week. The New York Times, citing a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, reported that Secretary of State John Kerry proposed the letter in a conversation with Karzai. Karzai asked that Obama sign it,...

I always check the news for word on what is happening over in Afghanistan where our troops are still going on patrol, dying, and losing limbs. Wondering why Foxnews.com was not updating their Afghanistan page I went to the World page where the link used to be and now there is only a "Conflict" link. Yo, Fox, until our troops are out of harms way, we are still fighting a WAR in Afghanistan.

America isn’t a warmonger. It’s a welfare-state monger. Liberals like to talk about how much money we could spend on welfare if we weren’t fighting all those wars. The good news is we’re already spending more on welfare than war.Average estimates of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars come out at under 4 trillion dollars. The 2011 Costs of War estimate put it at under 3 trillion dollars.Meanwhile the cost of the welfare state easily tops that. New research from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee shows that over the last 5 years, the U.S. has...

An Afghan army special forces commander has defected to an insurgent group allied with the Taliban in a Humvee truck packed with his team's guns and high-tech equipment, officials in the eastern Kunar province said on Sunday. Monsif Khan, who raided the supplies of his 20-man team in Kunar's capital Asadabad over the Eid al-Adha religious holiday, is the first special forces commander to switch sides, joining the Hezb-e-Islami organization. "He sent some of his comrades on leave and paid others to go out sightseeing, and then escaped with up to 30 guns, night-vision goggles, binoculars and a Humvee," said...

A bomb in a mosque killed a provincial governor Tuesday in the highest profile assassination in recent months, part of an intensified campaign to intimidate Afghanistan’s administration as it prepares for elections and the withdrawal of foreign troops after 12 years of war. The bomb killed Gov. Arsallah Jamal of eastern Logar province as he delivered a speech at the main mosque in the provincial capital of Puli Alam to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The attack also wounded 15 people, five of them critically, said his spokesman, Din Mohammad Darwesh.

The commandant of the Marine Corps on Monday took the extraordinary step of firing two generals for not adequately protecting a giant base in southern Afghanistan that Taliban fighters stormed last year, resulting in the deaths of two Marines and the destruction of a half a dozen U.S. fighter jets. It is the first time since the Vietnam War that a general, let alone two, has been sacked for negligence after a successful enemy attack. But the assault also was unprecedented: Fifteen insurgents entered a NATO airfield and destroyed almost an entire squadron of Marine AV-8B Harrier jets, the largest...

KANDAHAR — An official says a suicide car bomber apparently aiming to hit a NATO-Afghan convoy near the southern city of Kandahar blew up early, killing at least three civilians. Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial governor, says it’s unclear why the car bomber detonated his explosives early. He says the NATO and Afghan soldiers are all safe.

As it intensifies its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. military is being forced to fly massive amounts of gear and equipment out of the country instead of using cheaper overland and sea routes, according to Pentagon officials. Military logisticians would like to send home 60 percent of their equipment and vehicles by trucking them into Pakistan and then loading them onto ships — the least expensive method by far. But cargo is flowing out on that route at only one-third the planned rate, the officials said. ... The government of Afghanistan closed the border this summer after a dispute over...

Taliban militants unleashed car bombs at the U.S. Consulate in western Afghanistan on Friday morning, triggering a firefight with security forces in an attack that killed at least two Afghans. The U.S. said all its personnel from the mission were safe and that American forces later secured the site. The attack in the city of Herat — along with a suicide truck bombing in the country's east that wounded seven Afghans — underscored the perilous security situation here as U.S.-led troops reduce their presence ahead of a full withdrawal next year. It was also a rude return to reality for...

Pakistani lawmakers elected a textile businessman who briefly served as the governor of southern Sindh province as the country’s next president Tuesday, the election commission chief said, a result that was widely expected. The election of Mamnoon Hussain, nominated by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N party, followed a late night attack by 150 Taliban militants on a prison, illustrating one of the major challenges facing the new president. The fighters freed more than 250 prisoners, including 38 suspected militants, and killed 14 people, including guards and Shiite Muslim prisoners, officials said. … Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will remain the most...

COMBAT OUTPOST WILDERNESS, Afghanistan — The Taliban and its allies are plotting a bloody and spectacular end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Foreign fighters are pouring into the eastern part of the country to take on U.S. and allied forces in what will likely be the final fighting season for American troops here. Pakistani-based terror groups like the Haqqani Network and others are calling upon “every house, every family” to send fighters into Afghanistan, Afghan army commanders stationed at the American base in Paktia province told The Hill. “The madrassas are emptying" in Pakistan, added Lt. Col. David Hamann, who...