QURAN BURNING EFFECT ON AFGHANISTAN
Support the troops, burn a Quran

"... a hundred or so demonstrators gathered outside a US military base at Mirwais in southern Afghanistan on hearing that there had been a ritual Quran-burning inside the base. In fact, it had been a routine pit burn of documents. At one point in the rally, a demonstrator raised an AK-47 toward a base tower guard, and was shot... there have been several such demonstrations in Afghanistan, and hard line Muslim fundamentalists have used their cover to tear down the campaign posters of the liberal or female candidates for seats in parliament... The anti-Muslim bigots in the US who provoked all this trouble with their Nazi-like threats of book-burning (some of which have been followed through on) did US troops in Afghanistan no favors. I think the growing urban legend in Afghanistan that virtually all Americans enjoy a good Quran barbecue regularly and that it is a central ritual on US military bases is a real psy-ops threat to US counter-insurgency efforts..."
http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/demonstration-outside-us-base-in-afghanistan-against-quran-burning-turns-violent.html

U.S. TAXPAYERS LIKELY TO BAIL OUT FAILED KABUL BANK

"... Da Kabul Bank, among the country’s biggest such institutions, has been taken over by the Afghanistan government in the face of a persistent run on it by frightened depositors. The bank has huge debts and has been being run like a private fief. The central bank had earlier denied that it would take over the troubled Kabul Bank. But the government pays government and military salaries through it, and could not easily lose it, or risk that its failure would lead to a collapse of the country’s entire financial sector, with massive runs on other banks. The central bank’s takeover makes it most likely that American taxpayers will bail out the Kabul Bank, which had been used by a clique around Karzai to buy up real estate (some of it now worthless) in Dubai..."
http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/1-dead-45-wounded-in-kabul-anti-american-protest-kabul-bank-taken-over-by-government.html

SECURITY IN AFGHANISTAN DETERIORATING

"Afghanistan is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months... Large parts of the country that were once completely safe, like most of the northern provinces, now have a substantial Taliban presence... Unarmed government employees can no longer travel safely in 30 percent of the country’s 368 districts... and there are districts deemed too dangerous to visit in all but one of the country’s 34 provinces... With one attack after another, the Taliban and their insurgent allies have degraded security in almost every part of the country... The Afghan N.G.O. Safety Office says that by almost every metric it has, Afghanistan is more dangerous now than at any time since 2001..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?_r=2

US SOLDIERS KILLED CIVILIANS, COLLECTED FINGERS

"Twelve American soldiers... members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan... face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies... They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/09/us-soldiers-afghan-civilians-fingers

RUSSIAN BUSINESS DEALS IN AFGHANISTAN

"... Russia has already begun a broad push into Afghan deal-making, negotiating to refurbish more than 140 Soviet-era installations, like hydroelectric stations, bridges, wells and irrigation systems, in deals that could be worth more than $1 billion. A Russian helicopter company, Vertikal-T, has contracts with NATO and the Afghan government to fly Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopters throughout the country..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/world/europe/19russia.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp

KARZAI BANS PRIVATE SECURITY FIRMS

"Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has given private security firms working in Afghanistan four months to end their operations... saying they undermine government security forces... more than 50 private security companies, roughly half of them Afghan and the other half international, employ 30,000 to 40,000 armed personnel in Afghanistan... the conduct of private security personnel had caused "a lot of uproar among the Afghan population".
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/08/2010816104813959499.html

U.S. SUPERSIZES BAGRAM BASE BEFORE WITHDRAWAL

"BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Anyone who thinks the United States is really going to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011 needs to come to this giant air base an hour away from Kabul. There’s construction everywhere. It’s exactly what you wouldn’t expect from a transient presence.... But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn’t ever imagine possessing before 9/11.
In 2011, the U.S. military probably won’t be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It’ll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -– if not some it’s yet to ink."
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/u-s-afghan-mega-base/