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"Afghan intelligence believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an area close to Abbottabad four years ago - but no action was taken after the claim was furiously rejected by Pakistan's president, Afghanistan's former intelligence chief has said."

"WASHINGTON: A congressional oversight body has sent a letter to the US State Department, saying that some American-funded companies and individuals are actively supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan. In the letter, which was also copied to the US Agency for International Development, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction urged the US government to immediately stop disbursement of federal funds to these companies and individuals."

"According to journalist Douglas Wissing in his new book, Funding the Enemy, once the unholy alliance was forged between the brothers Karzai, rapacious warlords and incestuous multinational corporations, U.S. taxpayer dollars began to "lubricate an entire system of corruption that eventually extended to the Taliban.""

"It was just one brief exchange about Afghanistan with an aide late in 2009, but it suggests how President Obama's thinking about what he once called "a war of necessity" began to radically change less than a year after he took up residency in the White House. "

"Mr. Hossaini was photographing young Afghan Shiites during a procession for Ashura, which marks the death of Shiite Islam's holiest martyr. Some of those he had photographed recognized him. The 30-year-old photographer, who is Shiite himself, remembered seeing some of them smile. Then, he heard a large explosion.

Development in Afghanistan: ""Of course we built too much," said one official. "We didn't think about how the Afghans would pay for it. But it was understandable. Nobody is blaming the military. We wanted to show them what we could do for them, but without regard for sustainability.""

"When construction crews faced attacks while working on a major American-financed highway here in southeastern Afghanistan, Western contractors turned to a powerful local figure named simply Arafat, who was suspected to have links to Afghanistan's insurgents. "

"The conclusion is inescapable that the Pakistan Army protected bin Laden and recently decided to give him up, rather than sacrifice the Army's relationship with the US. The terms are not known as yet, but there certainly is a trade in which bin Laden was sacrificed. The trade might involve an end to US drone attacks across the border, which humiliate the Pakistan Army, or a new coordination regime for drone attacks into Pakistan."

"On May 20, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, then the American commander in Afghanistan, referred to the operation in Marjah, Helmand-an operation earlier touted as a potential turning point for U.S. Afghan counterinsurgency (COIN)-as a "bleeding ulcer." [1] Immediately, we were reminded of a similar expression from an earlier Afghan War. On February 1986, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev speaking to the 27th General Congress of the Communist Party posited that the Soviet war in Afghanistan had become a "bleeding wound." Was McChrystal's comment just an unfortunate choice of words or a harbinger that the United States faced a Soviet-style disaster in Afghanistan?"

" United States officials modified their narrative on Osama bin Laden's killing, saying that the Pakistanis had little involvement. However, well-placed security sources maintain that the operation was without a doubt a joint Pakistan-US effort and that all logistics were arranged inside Pakistan. "

"The resolution that the United States Conference of Mayors passed on Monday calling on President Obama and Congress to "speed up the ending" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was not nearly as strong as the one it passed 40 years ago, calling on President Richard M. Nixon to withdraw all American troops from Vietnam within six months. "

West Point faculty debate whether winning-hearts-and-minds strategy is dead.

"The Afghan war is returning to the place it began: the violent eastern borderlands with Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda slipped out of American reach a decade ago and have organized their insurgency ever since."