All Blog Posts from World Watch

A Taliban detainee in Pakistan says he has information on where Osama bin Laden was this past January or February, according to a BBC report Friday.

While the detainee's claims have yet to be verified, he says he met bin Laden several times prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Basing his information on a contact, the detainee tells the BBC, "In 2009, in January or February I met this friend of mine. He said he had come from meeting Sheikh Osama, and he could arrange for me to meet him."

The detainee added of his contact, whom he said was a Mehsud tribesman, "He helps al Qaeda people coming from other countries to get to the sheikh (bin Laden), so he can advise them on whatever they are planning for Europe or other places.

"The sheikh doesn't stay in any one place. That guy came from Ghazni, so I think that's where the sheikh was."

Read full post…

Finbarr O'Reilly,a Reuters photographer based in Africa, created an audio slideshow for GlobalPost that captures some of challenges facing coalition troops in the worsening Afghan conflict.

Read full post…

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.

Read full post…

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

---

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?

Read full post…

The Taliban are well known for funding their insurgency through illicit poppy fields, but the U.S. military may be unwittingly adding an estimated $80-160 million over the last year to their coffers.

According to a report from GlobalPost, military procurement contracts are filtering via local contractors to the Taliban. In effect, the local population is paying a protection fee to the Taliban with Pentagon funding.

A variety of local Afghan vendors are paid around $800 million a year by the U.S. to supply the Afghan police and military with items ranging from gas and water to winter socks and tires, and the Taliban reportedly extract between 10 and 20 percent of the fees.

Read full post…

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."

Read full post…

A portion of American taxpayer dollars slated for development projects in Afghanistan is alleged to end up in the hands of the Taliban, the GlobalPost reports.

Payoffs to the Taliban are a widely known practice in Afghanistan, according to a report by GlobalPost last month. When the money is not paid, they wreak havoc in the area, blowing up bridges, kidnapping contractors and bringing projects to a halt.

Read full post…

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.

Read full post…

When I move around Kabul these days, I am reminded of that old cliché: all that glitters is not gold.

The center of the capital has certainly changed. There are multi-colored reflective glass windows adorning the stores, glinting in the sun. Shiny and new. Unlike anything I saw in Kabul the day the city fell to the Northern Alliance forces.

Read full post…

Pakistan’s army may require months to prepare for a new military offensive against the Taliban in a restive region along the country’s unsettled border with Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani general on Tuesday told President Obama’s envoy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region according to senior Pakistani officials.

Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, a widely respected army commander, met with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Mr. Obama's envoy, to brief him on Pakistan’s northwest frontier province, specifically the areas at the center of Taliban activity.

It is this region which is of the most interest to the U.S. as Afghanistan heads in to Thursday’s presidential elections. In the past, U.S. officials have complained about Taliban militants crossing the border with relative ease to attack Afghan and western troops in Afghanistan before returning to Pakistan’s soil to reorganize.

Read full post…