Afghanistan

The government here has sent NATO headquarters a draft agreement that would give Afghanistan more control over future NATO deployments in the country -- including the positioning of some U.S. troops, officials said. The draft technical agreement would establish rules of conduct for NATO-led troops and require that additional NATO troops and their locations be approved by the Afghan government. The agreement also would prohibit NATO troops from searching Afghan homes.

In village after village, the pattern is the same. Sinister "night letters" threaten tribal elders considered loyal to the government. The local girls school is forced to close down -- or goes up in flames. Those bold or reckless enough to travel by road risk ambush, abduction or worse. Alarmed by the tightening Taliban grip on huge swaths of Afghan countryside, U.S.

Poor planning, weak oversight and greed combined to soak U.S. taxpayers and undermine American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, government watchdogs tell a new commission examining waste and corruption in wartime contracts. Since 2003, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding.

Afghan authorities said Tuesday that they had broken up a suicide bombing cell responsible for a string of attacks in the capital, including a massive explosion last month that killed an American serviceman and wounded five other U.S. soldiers.

Bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan will be much tougher than in Iraq, the newly appointed U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan said Sun- day. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Richard Holbrooke said he had never in his political career seen any situation as difficult as that of Pakistan and Afghanistan. "In my view, it's going to be much tougher than Iraq," said Holbrooke, who will travel to the region this week. Holbrooke was in Munich as part of a high-level U.S.

The Obama administration plans to complete its overhaul of U.S. policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan by April, before a crucial NATO summit, the White House said Tuesday in announcing the new head of its review. Before the reassessment is complete, President Obama is likely to decide on the details of a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

Tens of thousands of assault rifles and other arms in Afghanistan are at risk of being stolen because U.S. officials have lost track of them, according to a congressionally ordered audit that warns that some weapons may already be in Taliban hands. The Government Accountability Office found that inventory controls were lacking for more than a third of the 242,000 light weapons the U.S. donated to Afghan forces -- including AK-47s, mortars, machine guns and grenade launchers.

President Obama's new envoy to Afghanistan met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday amid a downturn in U.S.-Afghan relations and an upswing in militant violence. Karzai says he still has not spoken with the new U.S. president almost a month after his inauguration, a sign that Karzai no longer enjoys the favored status he had under former President Bush. "There is tension between us and the U.S.

An Afghan delegation will join a U.S.-led policy review of the war in the region, President Hamid Karzai and U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke announced Sunday. Karzai and Holbrooke were overtly cordial to each other in a 13-minute media briefing at which neither took questions. Holbrooke allowed Karzai to announce that President Obama had approved the request for the Afghan delegation. Holbrooke also said the U.S. supported the announcement of the Aug.