The Taliban have regained control in these pockets despite seven years of American attacks and the presence of more than 50,000 U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops. There are thousands of U.S. and British troops in southern Afghanistan, but American commanders say they don't have enough forces to prevent the Taliban from controlling territory there.

NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer appealed Tuesday for more troops from outside the United States to be sent to Afghanistan to prevent it from again becoming a “safe haven” for terrorists.

The struggle for influencing Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda has begun in right earnest. The maneuvering by influential establishment figures - including Congressional voices, Obama advisors and even military officials - who are projecting incumbent Robert Gates as secretary of defense in the incoming administration highlights the pressures working on the president-elect.

On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, another record was being set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a US Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since December 2001.

American planes have, in fact, taken out two brides in the past seven months. And don't try to bury your dead or mark their deaths ceremonially either, because funerals have been hit as well.

Pakistan temporarily barred oil tankers and container trucks from a key passageway to Afghanistan, threatening a critical supply route for U.S. and NATO troops on Sunday and raising more fears about security in the militant-plagued border region.

Pakistan temporarily suspended oil tankers and trucks with sealed containers from using a key passage into Afghanistan, an official said Sunday, a move that will likely impact supplies heading to U.S. and NATO troops.

The suspension came just days after a band of militants hijacked around a dozen trucks whose load included Humvees and other supplies headed to the foreign forces in Afghanistan.

More than 600 prisoners remain at Bagram without being charged; some have been in legal limbo for more than five years. Because the United States calls Afghanistan a battleground in the war on terror, it contends that prisoners held there have no right to challenge their detention. Whether for political or strategic reasons, or merely because of Guantánamo Bay burnout, no more than a handful of detainees held by the U.S. government at Bagram have any legal representation. Yet their plight reflects a problem that extends far beyond the U.S.

Aides said the incoming Democratic president wants to explore a more regional strategy in Afghanistan, including the possibility of negotiations with Tehran.

Afghanistan's Taliban called on US president-elect Barack Obama to repudiate the "war-mongering" policies of President George W. Bush to repair the country's image abroad, a group that monitors Islamist websites said.

World leaders have already drawn up demands to put to US president-elect Barack Obama and quickly expressed a desire to see his promise of change applied to key conflicts and dragging the global economy out of crisis.

Now that a Democrat has been elected president, the Democrats in Congress have no excuse. They can no longer pretend that they have to “hold back” to win the election.

They have no excuse to delay war crimes charges against Bush, Cheney and company for Iraq.

They have no excuse to delay war crimes charges for torture.

They have no excuse to delay criminal charges for spying on Americans.

They have no excuse to delay criminal charges for 9/11.

Veteran journalist Tariq Ali said this morning that the war in Afghanistan is lost.

Specifically, he said that British intelligence has concluded that - no matter how many troops are sent in - the war is already lost and is unwinnable in the future.

In a telephone interview, Colonel Julian accused Taliban forces of "immersing themselves" among civilians on Monday to deter American forces from using airstrikes.

"Our close air support has been so devastating with the Taliban that they are trying to stop us using it" by provoking situations in which civilians are caught up in fighting and killed, he said.

Just a day after reports emerged that a US air strike against a wedding party in Kandahar earlier in the week killed at least 40 civilians, another US strike in Badghis Province killed at least another 20 people, with at least seven of them reportedly civilians.

If this is all some insidious Taliban plot to prevent the US from using air strikes, they appear to have sorely overestimated the US military’s reluctance to kill large numbers of innocent civilians.

At least 40 Afghan civilians have been killed and 28 more injured as an airstrike of the U.S.-led Coalition forces hit a wedding gathering in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, officials and local villagers said Wednesday.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Afghanistan's military must be expanded and that the conflict needs to be recognized as "an Afghan war, not an American war and not a NATO war."

Promoting the expansion of Kabul's military force, Gates said: "We would be making a terrible mistake if this ends up being called America's war. This is the Afghans' war for their own country, and we need to make sure they know we are not there to run it, we are there to help."

A commander of Britain's elite special forces in Afghanistan has resigned, a defence source said on Saturday, declining to give further details.

Major Sebastian Morley, a reservist commander with the Special Air Service (SAS), blamed a chronic lack of investment in equipment for the deaths of some of his soldiers, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

With a combination of a summer drought, poor irrigation and rising global food prices, a famine is unveiling in Afghanistan with third of Afghans are suffering chronic food insecurity, a British think-tank warned on Friday, October 31.

"While the eyes of the world have focused on violence which is increasingly terrorist in character, an estimated 8.4 million Afghans, perhaps a third of the nation, are now suffering from 'chronic and transitory food insecurity'," Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) analyst Paul Smyth said in a press briefing on its website.

As the US public is dimly aware, things are not going very well in Afghanistan.

Recall that it took years, US$5-6 billion in CIA funding matched dollar for dollar by the Saudis, and a concerted national effort by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan assisting a variety of domestic and foreign fighters to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. It also took officially sanctioned safe havens in Pakistan that the Russians wouldn't violate, and a supply of Stinger missiles to negate the vital Soviet advantage in helicopter-based mobility and firepower.

Pakistani and Afghan political and tribal leaders meeting in Islamabad Tuesday have agreed to seek talks with Taliban insurgents in a bid to limit violence along their shared border. The announcement came after a two-day meeting described as a mini-jirga in the Pakistani capital. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Islamabad.

The two-day "mini-jirga" in Islamabad ended with pledges to create new committees in both countries that will try to establish contact with Taliban groups.

The United States is considering taking part in talks with elements of the Taliban in a sharp change in tactics in Afghanistan, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday citing unnamed officials.

The report said the new approach was contained in a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of US strategy in Afghanistan. Talks would be led by the Afghan government, “but with the active participation of the US,” it said.

The US presidential candidates are warbling about what strategies will best suit Afghanistan in a post-Bush world. Both Barack Obama and John McCain promise that the interminable conflict will be of “top priority” come 2009. Neither has provided clear guidelines, largely because such guidelines are essentially useless. The Coalition forces in Afghanistan continue to lose the ground to Taliban. Planners are scratching their heads in desperation.

A French unit was surrounded last weekend in Kapisa Province Afghanistan and had to withdraw from the field, leaving behind two anti-tank Milan missiles and a launcher. Journalists say no French soldiers were hurt in the clash, but “all 14 Taliban insurgents were killed.”

"It was hard preparing to risk your life for something you don’t believe. It eats away your soul." An ex-Army officer contemplates contemplates the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, and his recently completed third combat tour.

Beset by a rising civilian death toll and widespread corruption charges Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who once boasted an enormous approval rating, is seen as an increasingly ineffective and unacceptable leader by the Afghan population. With the country earlier this month beginning its registration of voters for next year’s presidential election, Karzai’s hopes for a second term seem to be fading fast.

Nine Afghan soldiers have been killed by mistake in a Nato-led air strike in southeast Afghanistan.

The US-led coalition said its troops "may have mistakenly killed and injured" Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers after coming under attack while returning from an operation.

"As a coalition convoy was returning from a previous operation, they were involved in multiple engagements. As a result of the engagements, ANA soldiers were killed and injured," the military said in a statement.

Crushed under the vicious cycle of violence, many Afghans see peace as a distant dream and yearn for the peaceful days of the Taliban regime more than five years after its ouster.

There is yet more news from Afghanistan about the killing of civilians by foreign forces’ air attacks. The BBC reported that “Angry villagers took 18 bodies - including badly mangled bodies of women and children - to the governor's house in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, Haji Adnan Khan, a tribal leader in the city who had seen the bodies, was reported as saying. He said there might be more bodies trapped under the rubble. A BBC reporter in Lashkar Gah said he saw the bodies - three women and the rest children ranging in age from six months to 15.

Foreign troops killed nine Afghan soldiers in a mistaken air strike in the southeast of the country overnight, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

It is time to face facts in Afghanistan: the situation is spiralling downwards, and if we do not change our approach, we face disaster. Violence is up in two-thirds of the country, narcotics are the main contributor to the economy, criminality is out of control and the government is weak, corrupt and incompetent. The international coalition is seen as a squabbling bunch of foreigners who have not delivered on their promises. Although the Taliban have nowhere near majority support, their standing is growing rapidly among some ordinary Afghans.

Taliban insurgents pulled some 50 passengers off a bus in southern Afghanistan and beheaded as many as 30 of them after accusing them of being soldiers traveling in civilian clothes, Afghan officials in the region announced on Sunday.

Afghan Taliban claimed to have shot down a US military helicopter in Birmal area of Afghanistan’s Paktika province early on Saturday morning, killing seven soldiers.

The Pakistani army is locked in a fierce battle to stop fuel and arms supply routes to British and American forces in Afghanistan falling under Taliban control.

Recently the Taliban have sought to instigate talks that may lead to a settlement in Afghanistan which the US and their allies now concede is unwinable. Part of the concessions the Taliban are willing to make are to disassociate themselves from ‘al Qaeda’. A reader has asked me to comment on this. Here is my response.

The attitude of the Taliban with regard to ‘al Qaeda’ is indicative of the extent of influence ‘al Qaeda’ as an organisation really has in Central Asia – about zilch.

This is the conflict western politicians and media continue to urge their reluctant populations to support as a war for civilisation. In reality, it is a war of barbarity, whose contempt for the value of Afghan life has fuelled the very resistance that western military and political leaders are now unable to contain.

American officials have backed the view of General Sir David Richards, the new head of the British Army, that a "surge" is needed in Afghanistan to beat the Taliban.

The Independent revealed yesterday that General Richards would replace General Sir Richard Dannatt as the head of the Army – he will take over next summer – and disclosed that the new commander believed 30,000 more troops would be needed to fight the Taliban. He is seeking 5,000 extra British troops.

The 64,000 rupee question that arises from Admiral Mullen's new anti-drug policy is: Why was it not done seven years ago when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan? Why did Washington turn a blind eye to the Afghan drug trade and is only now taking some action?

After fighting the Taliban for the past seven years, many working for the Afghan security forces are now switching sides.

Sulieman Ameri and his 16 men were until a month ago serving the Afghan government as police patrolling the border with Iran.

Now they answer to the Taliban and their goal is to drive all foreign troops out of Afghanistan.

After fighting the Taliban for the past seven years, many working for the Afghan security forces are now switching sides.

Sulieman Ameri and his 16 men were until a month ago serving the Afghan government as police patrolling the border with Iran.

Now they answer to the Taliban and their goal is to drive all foreign troops out of Afghanistan.

The Taliban are isolating Afghanistan's capital city from the rest of the country, choking off important supply routes and imposing their rules on the provinces near Kabul. Interviews suggest that the Taliban have gained control along three of the four major highways into the city, and some believe it's a matter of time before they regulate all traffic around the capital.

While coalition forces continue to kill militants in the provinces south of Kabul, the resilient Taliban forces continue to expand their influence in the area. Their presence is so overwhelming in some areas that they’re set up their own ’shadow government’ with its own court system. In the areas they control most completely, these government systems are considerably more powerful than their coalition-supported counterparts, and according to some reports, better accepted.

The situation in Afghanistan is liable to get worse in 2009, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has warned, amid reports of a bleak draft US intelligence assessment that details a slide into corruption, drugs and insurgent violence.

"The trends across the board are not going in the right direction," Admiral Michael Mullen told reporters at a breakfast in Washington.

It's a mystery that has got British law enforcement officials and others across the planet scratching their heads. Put bluntly, enough heroin to supply the world's demand for years has simply disappeared.

For those who savor historical irony, the Soviet Empire collapsed in the years 1989-1991 because of an implosion of its economy brought on by a ruinous arms race with the United States and the heavy costs of occupying Afghanistan.

Seventeen years later came the turn of the world’s other great imperial power, the United States. Lethally bloated by runaway debt, and burdened by 50% of the world’s military spending, the house of cards known as the US economy finally collapsed.

Sometime soon, seven years after it invaded Afghanistan, the Bush administration is expected to settle on a new policy to stabilize that still-fragile country.