British troops have handed over to the U.S. Marines the Helmand city, Sangin, which they had captured in 2005. Sangin is one of the six largest opium trading centers in Helmand province, and the British had captured five of the six. Beginning 2006, opium production in Helmand province soared as never before.

According to senior U.S. intelligence sources, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Rolling Stone magazine interview was no gaffe. The commander of U.S.

President Obama's plan for "winning" the war in Afghanistan by July 2011 took a hit, when his commander in that country, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, admitted, last week, that the planned NATO offensive in Kandahar had to be postponed because of lack of support among the Kandaharis. "When you go to protect the people, the people have to want you to protect them," he told reporters in Brussels. McChrystal's statement followed hard on the heels of a front page story in the Washington Post detailing NATO's failed offensive in Marja.

I propose that concerned governments must prepare to focus attention for the longer term, on crucially relevant, more ancient and broader, globally strategic aspects of a present world-wide threat to civilization as a whole, as presently expressed in the case of Afghanistan.

It was an open secret. Nonetheless, cited by an Afghan Member of Parliament, Nasimeh Niazi, the news will bend many ears inside, and outside of, Afghanistan.

Behind the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal— who, in spite of himself, was a vehicle for the uproar in the U.S. military against Obama Administration policy—was the commitment of the Administration to a policy of perpetual war, argues an op-ed by defense analyst Andrew J. Bacevich in the Washington Post today. Previously, American leaders understood what Gen.

General Stanley McChrystal's Rolling Stone interview was no gaffe or flight forward. According to author Michael Hastings, he was given full access to the Afghan commander and his top aides, during a trip to Paris, that was greatly extended due to the volcanic ash disruption of air travel.

The two-day International Forum on Drug Production in Afghanistan: A Challenge to the International Community, opened in Moscow on Wednesday. As chairman of the Organizing Committee and one of the keynote speakers, Federal Narcotics Control Service chief Victor Ivanov brought out the strategic dimension of the Afghanistan drug boom, recounting not only the impact of drug consumption on the population, but the drug-money financing of terrorism worldwide. Russia's North Caucasus and the Uighur-populated regions of China are especially affected areas, Ivanov said.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been pressing Russia's demand that the UN require foreign forces in Afghanistan under its authority to destroy opium crops.

On April 4, Afghan President Hamid Karzai held a shura meeting in Kabul with more than 1,000 tribal elders from Kandahar, and promised them that NATO's planned Kandahar offensive would not be carried out without their support.