Remember all those wacky conspiracy theorists who said that "liberating" Afghanistan from the Taliban was really about building an oil pipeline through the country? From India's Rediff.com, May 19:

India joins Afghanistan gas pipeline project
The Cabinet on Thursday approved India joining the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan natural gas pipeline and the inclusion of 1,113 km of national highways for upgradation under the third phase of the National Highway Development Project.

From The Jurist, May 8:

Afghan parliament descends into chaos as lawmakers attack female legislator
The floor of the Afghan parliament has witnessed its first outbreak of violence, with lawmakers physically and verbally assaulting a controversial female legislator who called several of the country's mujahedeen leaders criminals unfit for public office. Female colleagues of 27-year old anti-fundamentalist women's health worker Malalai Joya threw plastic bottles at her and male lawmakers insulted her and allegedly made death threats in the wake of a speech Sunday. Joya was surrounded by a cordon of moderates and escaped unhurt.

From AP, March 22:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Authorities launched a probe today into the killings by Afghan security forces of at least 15 people, who an Afghan army commander claimed were Taliban rebels but locals said were tribesmen wanting to attend a religious festival.

A March 13 report from Pakistan's Daily Times on the army-occupied town of Miranshah in North Waziristan:

PESHAWAR: Authorities in Miranshah further eased an eight-day-old curfew on Sunday after soldiers killed dozens of militants in an operation last week.

The military said that security forces killed up to 30 pro-Taliban foreign militants and their local supporters in a village about 10 kilometres west of Miranshah on Friday night. The curfew was relaxed from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Shops and markets remained open during the day but many residents were seen leaving their homes in private cars and pickups piled with household belongings, witnesses said.

As a war of words breaks out between Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf over accusations of Afghan insurgents using Pakistani territory as a staging ground, Islamabad broaches actually fencing off the border the way Pat Buchanan wants to fence off Mexico. Once again, this is only likely to enflame the situation.

Great, just what we need—military incursions to provoke a general uprising in Pakistan's increasingly restive Tribal Areas. Just to give the teetering edifice of Musharraf's dictatorship a healthy shove towards the abyss. Then we can have a nuclear-armed Taliban in power. From VOA, March 1, via Global Security:

This brief analysis of the challenges facing the expanded NATO mandate in Afghanistan sheds light on the real politics of the "cartoon jihad"—obviously, the Danish cartoons have been seized upon as a symbol and crystalization of a much wider set of greivances, which may vary from country to country but generally have to do with a sense of national humiliation. Afghans have bitter memories of the Soviet occupation, and even if they are happy to see the Taliban gone they are going to resent the increased NATO presence. The inter-related challenges NATO faces include popular unrest, Taliban insurgency (especially in the south), continued internecine warlord violence (especially in the north), and the potential for internationalization of the conflict, with US ally Pakistan ironically serving as a Taliban guerilla staging ground and Iran viewing the Western troop presence on its eastern border uneasily. From the (State Department-funded) Radio Free Afghanistan, Feb. 13:

"Death to Denmark!" Does it get any more surreal than this? From the foreign press on the escalating anti-cartoon protests:

Police clobbered stone-throwing protesters with batons and fired tear gas in the Pakistanian city of Peshawar on Wednesday - Pakistan's third consecutive day of violent protests over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons, witnesses said.