The Afghan minister of mines denies that he accepted a bribe of equivalent to 32 million U.S. dollars. The bribe said to come from a large Chinese mining firm is the largest reported today. This is the biggest accusation to date in a region swimming in opportunity for drugs, arms dealers, and other predatory business.

Over the next few week NATO forces will order substantially more troops into Afghanistan. The alliance's secretary general predicts that they will engage in broad counter-insurgent strategy pending President Obama's decision on what course to take.

According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. has no longer term interests in Afghanistan other than the Taliban. Clinton provided the assurences that once this objective is achieved the U.S. will withdraw.

As opposed to a dog who welcomes home his soldier, as with Nubs the dog, which we wrote about earlier, Australian Special Forces units are welcoming back Sabi. Sabi was lost during a gun battle in Afghanistan 14 months ago.

President Barack Obama is sending his national security advisers back to the drawing board. According to White House reports, the President has decided to reject all of the options presented him for military deployments in Afghanistan.

Military officials said Wednesday that body of Benjamin Sherman, 21, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, has been found in a river. Sherman is a paratrooper who went missing since last week in Afghanistan

Two and 1/2 months after the actual Presidential election, Afghanistan has named incumbent President Hamid Karzai as the winner, after the challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of a runoff. The runoff had been scheduled after a large number of Karzai ballots had been declared fraudulent.

Questions surrounding a second attempt at another presidential election arise. With only one choice, Hamid Karzai, left after contender opposition leader Dr. Abdullah Abdullah withdrew there may be no need.

As the Obama administration weighs sending more troops into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, a senior U.S. official has made his thoughts on the U.S. policy in that country known. Matthew Hoh, a key U.S. official in Afghanistan has resigned in protest over U.S. policy in the war-torn country.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, bowing to international criticism of this year's presidential election, has agreed to a runoff election between him and his chief opponent on November 7.

The front-page of the September 23rd Wall Street Journal carried the story “Congress Presses on War Plan” by Yochi J. Dreazen, Neil King Jr. and Peter Spiegel. What caught my attention in the article was a statement about the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll conducted between September 17th and 20th in which “59% of respondents said they were now ‘less confident’ that the war would come to a successful conclusion.”

According to the September 20th Los Angeles Times article “Afghan Jew a one-man upholder of tradition” by Mark Magnier reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, Zebulon Simantov says he is the last Jew in Afghanistan.