Taliban: Buyout Futile Without Foreign Pullout

Just one day before the London Conference on Afghanistan is to begin, Taliban forces issued a statement condemning what is seem by many as the cornerstone proposal likely to come out of the meeting, the buyout strategy.

The nations at the conference will commit money to a “Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund,” aimed at bribing members of the Taliban into giving up the insurgency in return for cash and the promise of jobs with the Karzai government.

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U.N. report finds corruption rife in Afghanistan

LONDON (Reuters) - Corruption costs Afghans $2.5 billion a year, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday, with the scale of bribery matching Afghanistan's opium trade.

A recent national survey found that Afghans were more concerned with public dishonesty than insecurity or unemployment.

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Obama wants record $708 billion for wars next year

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama will ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned - a request that could be an especially hard sell to some of the administration's Democratic allies.

The extra $33 billion in 2010 would mostly go toward the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war strategy late last year.

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