Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a suspected player in the country's booming opium trade, has received regular payments from the CIA for much of the past eight years, according to a front-page New York Times account Oct. 28. The report claims the agency pays Karzai for "a variety of services," including helping to recruit a CIA-directed paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.

The US embassy in Pakistan rejected Oct. 23 claims that an Islamabad warehouse in the possession of a subcontractor to Xe Worldwide, formerly Blackwater, was used to store heavy arms and ammunition for the company. Said the statement: "Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the import of equipment and supplies provided by the US to the government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies are imported at the request of the Pakistan government, which also certifies the shipments." It also said that the media outlets that published the story did not contact the embassy for comment. (Daily Times, Islamabad, Oct. 24)

The US military is providing intelligence and surveillance video from drones to assist the Pakistani army in its anti-Taliban offensive in South Waziristan, the Los Angeles Times reports, citing unnamed Washington officials. "We are coordinating with the Pakistanis," one official said. "And we do provide Predator support when requested." (LAT, Oct. 23)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Oct. 14 that the UK is sending 500 additional troops to Afghanistan. The announcement comes as President Barack Obama weighs proposals for up to 60,000 more troops. (AP, Oct. 15) The Taliban are rapidly seizing control in large areas of Afghanistan's countryside—most recently taking several villages in Kunduz province, riding around in pilfered police vehicles fixed with sound systems blaring Islamic songs. "We have control only over the governor's office," said the district governor of Chahr Dara, Abdul Wahid. "Outside those walls we have no jurisdiction at all. People do not come to the governor's office to solve their problems—they go to the Taliban." (IWPR, Oct. 12)

Streams of civilians jammed into cars and trucks to flee South Waziristan as Pakistan's air force pounded the area with air-strikes ahead of an expected ground offensive against the Taliban. On Oct. 15, a suspected US missile strike hit neighboring North Waziristan, killing four alleged militants, Pakistani officials said. Since the weekend, some 80 vehicles a day have carried fleeing families past one checkpoint at Chonda on the edge of Dera Ismail Khan, said a local police official. (AP, Oct. 15)

There is ironic timing to Barack Obama's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. Hours after getting the nod from the Nobel committee, he convened his war council in the White House Situation Room for talks on his military strategy in Afghanistan. (AFP, Oct. 9) Gen. Stanley McChrystal, US commander in Afghanistan, has sent alternative proposals with requests for more troops ranging from 40,000 to 60,000. (WSJ, Oct. 9) Obama is said to have ruled out de-escalating the Afghan war to a counter-terrorism effort aimed at al-Qaeda rather than the Taliban. (AlJazeera, Oct. 7) Other reports indicate Obama is willing to consider a role for the Taliban in Afghan's security forces as the price of peace. (The Telegraph, Oct. 9)

Four suspected militants were killed Sept. 30 when a presumed US drone fired missiles at two vehicles in Nurak, a village just east of the city of Miran Shah, in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area. It was the third suspected US drone strike in Pakistan's tribal areas in the past 24 hours. (CNN, Sept. 30) Tahir Yuldashev, leader of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), was killed in an Aug. 27 drone attack in South Waziristan, local media report. (Xinhua, Oct. 2)

Tribal elders said Oct. 1 that eight people—at least five of them civilians—were killed in an airstrike in southern Afghanistan on the previous day. A US military spokeswoman, Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, confirmed the strike, in the Nad Ali district of Helmand province, but declined to estimate the number of casualties before a review of the attack. According to Hajji Talib, a district council member from the area, the strike killed a farmer, his family and three guests in the village of Khushal. (NYT, Oct. 1)