All Blog Posts from World Watch

Updated 2:28 p.m. EDT

The New York Times reported Wednesday that brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been on the CIA payroll for at least eight years, according to American officials.

Ahmed Wali Karzai (at left) is a powerful figure in the southern Kandahar province with reported ties to Afghanistan's opium trade, which is owned and operated largely by the Taliban.

According to the Times' sources, who were not named, Karzai has received "regular payments" from the American foreign spy agency in exchange for his organizing a paramilitary force in Kandahar which operates at the CIA's behest.

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The Pakistani Taliban was quick to claim responsibility for Thursday's attacks in both the northwestern Kohat region and in the capital city of the Punjab province, Lahore.

A senior militant commander in the Taliban stronghold of Waziristan, along the border with Afghanistan, claimed in a phone call to CBS News Sami Yousafzai just hours after those devastating attacks that 20 cells, each consisting of between five and 20 militants, had been established in the Punjab province to carry out a wave of attacks over the next two months.

While senior intelligence officials in the Pakistani capital and foreign diplomats strongly dispute the claim that the Taliban has gained the ability to plan and execute major attacks in the Punjab, the Taliban's claim is indicative of a fast-growing threat to Pakistan's most densely populated province.

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The White House has dismissed a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation that President Obama might announce an additional surge of troops — likely between 40,000 and 45,000 as early as next week.

The BBC's "Newsnight" program reported Wednesday night that Mr. Obama has already made his decision, informed the British government that a significant troop increase was coming, and that he may seek to make the announcement publically ahead of a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Slovakia next week.

Newsnight, a well-regarded hard-news magazine show, did not name sources for its report.

The White House was quick to tell the BBC that the claim was incorrect, and that the Mr. Obama was still in the highly publicized decision-making process about how to alter the American war strategy in Afghanistan.

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This story was filed by CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk at the United Nations.

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Eight years ago this month, the war in Afghanistan began, and in the coming weeks, President Obama will decide, after intense deliberation with his war council, what to do next.

The most puzzling, and troubling aspect of the deliberations, is how many genuinely basic questions remain unanswered. What are the goals? Who is in charge of the country where 100,000 troops are serving under U.S. and NATO command (and Mr. Obama is considering a dramatic increase)? And, of course, why?

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Nearly one out of six American service members in Iraq, about 20,000 in all, are involved in a massive logistical operation with one overriding goal: Getting our stuff and leaving.

Johan Spanner writes in The New York Times today about the challenges facing the military as it sets about dismantling about 300 bases and removing 1.5 million pieces of American equipment — everything from weapons and vehicles to coffeemakers — from Iraq.

Six years after the U.S.-led invasion, the "largest movement of soldiers and matériel in more than four decades" (according to Spanner) is further complicated by continued attacks for Iraqi insurgents; consideration of what will be left behind for Iraqis; and U.S. military needs in Afghanistan.

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Farida Tarana, the first female contestant from the conservative province of Herat to compete on "Afghan Star," the country's version of "American Idol," won a seat on the Kabul Provincial Council.

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Allegations of fraud in the Afghan election have left the Obama administration in a tight spot, reports the New York Times. Accusations of ballot-stuffing and phantom polling stations will undermine President Hamid Karzai's legitimacy if he is sworn in for another term - which seems likely - and will decrease his credibility among Afghans and the international community.

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On Friday, a German ground commander called in a U.S. airstrike on two stolen fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan. Dozens of civilians had gathered around the tankers and Afghan officials say 70 or more were killed by the American bombs.

Official investigations have ramped-up to determine which of the two NATO allies — German or the U.S. — made the tragic error that led to the misguided strike, but the real consequences won't wait for those findings. Nor can the real work to try and make amends to the Afghan people.

CBS News consultant Jere Van Dyk says it really doesn't make any difference whom, exactly, is to blame for the airstrike. In the minds of most Afghans, "they are all infidels, they're all outsiders and they're all suspect."

"What the United States has to do, regardless of who fired the weapons, is to show that they're sorry, that they care," said Van Dyk, "because every time you kill anybody on the ground - every cousin, every brother, every uncle, every father is now fodder for the Taliban."

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The Pentagon will swap out as many as 14,000 "clerical" and other non-combat troops for "trigger pullers" in Afghanistan — a way for commanders to boost the fighting force without altering the overall troop presence, according to a >report in the Los Angeles Times.

The report, which cites anonymous defense officials in Washington, comes on the heels of U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal handing over his report on the war to his superiors at the Pentagon and in NATO. His analysis does not make specific recommendations on troop numbers, but it is widely expected that he'll ask for an increase later this year.

Officials told the Times that rotating out thousands of non-combat troops and replacing them with their frontline-ready comrades makes sense given the intensity of the fight against Taliban insurgents.

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As President Obama heads to Camp David for the Labor Day weekend, his vacation reading is the sobering Afghanistan war report by U.S. and NATO General Stanley A. McChrystal, but he would be well-advised to add to his bedside literature the United Nation's new report on the increase of drug cartels in Afghanistan.

"Afghan Opium Survey 2009," was released Wednesday in Kabul by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The report reads like a John Le Carré spy novel. The headline is that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is down, but UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa also concludes the war-torn country now has its very own drug cartels.

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