It's commonly known that vast quantities of vice leave Afghanistan's borders each year, but German forces are fighting back. Media reports show that German military bases in the country received shipments of more than a million liters of alcoholic beverages last year. That included 990,000 liters of beer and 69,000 liters of wine. If all of this were consumed only by the 3,600 German troops stationed in Afghanistan, that would come out to 275 liters of beer per soldier.

Back in the Fatherland, the opposition Free Democrats party, which requested these figures from the military, seized on the revelation as a sign that more must be done to relieve the boredom of German troops. But the Defense Ministry shrugged these concerns off, saying troops were "well within" the two-cans-per day limit. The ministry added that the drinks, which are for purchase, are also consumed by German police, journalists, and diplomats. Even Foreign Minister Franz Walter Steinmeier likes to kick back a cold one when he's in country. "When he visits Afghanistan occasionally one or two cans of beer will be downed," said one Foreign Ministry spokesman.

If President-elect Obama pressures Germany into sending its troops south to fight the Taliban, maybe they'll have fewer chances to tank up. But so long as Chancellor Angela Merkel adamantly refuses to let this happen, I say "Prost!"

Photo: MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images

A wedding in Afghanistan reportedly ended in tragedy on Monday, when a missile fired by a U.S. aircraft slammed into the crowd, killing 40 civilians and wounding 28 others. When I saw the news, I wondered, why does the United States always seem to bomb weddings in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Part of the reason is that America's enemies are lying about the effects of American air strikes. "During the air war leading up to Gulf War I, it was amazing how U.S. airstrikes seemed to systematically hit Iraqi schools and hospitals," noted Wayne White, a former deputy director in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research for the Near East and South Asia, in an interview today. "[These claims] turned out to be, in most cases, Iraqi propaganda."

But that does not minimize the very real limitations of air power, and the fact that many strikes do indeed hit civilians. As far as weddings are concerned, a crowd of revelers can be hard to distinguish from a gathering of insurgents from the bird's-eye view of a spy drone. From afar, celebratory gunfire can also make a joyful wedding appear to be an angry mob. Air power's trouble in delivering pinpoint strikes, combined with the time lag between receiving intelligence and bombing a target, also increases the likelihood of civilian casualties.

White knows the limitations of allegedly "smart" munitions. "An airstrike which generally uses a 500-pound bomb, even if it hits its target in many cases, there's going to be collateral damage," he notes.  Airstrikes were never meant to be used in an urban environment or in villages, he argues, because of their lack of precision.

However, there has been an increasing reliance in air power in Iraq and Afghanistan, in order to make up for a lack of troop strength and also out of concern for soldiers' safety. In Afghanistan, air missions have risen 31 percent during the past year due to increased fighting and a lack of boots on the ground. Faced with the decision of killing a high-value target with a missile, which could also claim the lives of civilians in the area, and sending in ground troops, which could result in the death or injury of American soldiers, commanders are increasingly looking to air power. "It really comes down to the belief that they are more expendable than we are," White says. "[Iraqis and Afghans] see this as something that indicates that they count less than we do."

The lag time between receiving intelligence and launching a missile at a target also increases the risk of civilian casualties. Let's say an intel unit intercepts a phone call from a known insurgent in which he reveals his location. A spy drone would then be vectored towards that area to pinpoint the target. Half an hour may pass from the moment the intelligence arrived to the time a bomber is in position. During that time, the insurgent may have left, and unrelated activity in the area -- a wedding, for example -- can be mistaken as the target.

Photo: FILE'; Joseph Giordono-Pool/Getty Images

I got a military press release on this story yesterday, and it seems little else is known about the incident:

An Afghan national in Meywand, Khandahar province, reportedly doused a U.S. civilian working with the U.S. military with a flammable liquid and lit the worker on fire. Another U.S. civilian then shot and killed the attacker.

The burn victim sustained serious injuries and was transported to a Coalition forces medical facility for treatment.

That's pretty horrible. The interesting bit, however, is this detail:

The U.S. civilians were working with teams of anthropologists and psychologists that help the U.S. military with cultural awareness.

There's a fierce debate among anthropologists about the morality and practical effects of working with the U.S. military, a topic we addressed a few months back in a debate between Hugh Gusterson and Peter D. Feaver.

One aspect of the discussion we didn't really delve into was the military's controversial "human terrain teams," in which social scientists actually embed with military units to advise them on cultural issues. It sounds like the civilian was a member of such a team; I imagine this incident in Afghanistan will make it even harder to recruit qualified folks.

Afghans are about to get a path to riches that has nothing to do with poppy fields. A Kabul-based production company has just bought the rights to produce an Afghan version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

A run of 52 episodes is slated to start filming next month. The winnings won't be quite seven figures; the main prize will be 1 million Afghanis, or about $21,000. Given the country's woeful literacy rates, I'm curious to see what types of questions they'll develop, but I have no doubt the show could catch the attention of a large number of Afghans, who have embraced television in droves since the fall of the Taliban.

I just can't wait to see who the Afghan Regis will be.

FILE; Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

The inimitable Nir Rosen ventures out of Kabul to learn what is fueling the growing Taliban insurgency. The result is one of the best descriptions of the Taliban, and explanations for why the United States is losing the war in Afghanistan, in recent memory.

Rosen goes to great lengths to stress the "greater degree of flexibility and pragmatism" the Taliban have recently displayed, as opposed to during their heyday prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001. From a willingness to allowing girls to get an education to relaxed restrictions on television and radio, Rosen suggests a Taliban restoration would avoid the harsh measures that characterized their rule.

But old habits, as they say, die hard. Rosen eventually finds himself caught in the middle of organizational infighting, and realizes the Taliban's newfound niceties are on the verge of breaking down. "My mouth goes dry from fear; I feel as though I have lost my voice," Rosen writes upon being arrested by soldiers loyal to a Taliban commander rival to his hosts. After sending frenzied text messages to his contacts in Kabul, he is eventually released.

But how "reformed" can the Taliban be when visiting journalists are almost beheaded at a whim?

CQ's Jeff Stein reports that State Department staffers are signing up for service in rough neighborhoods:

Volunteers are flocking to the war zones now, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced this week, with slots in Iraq and Afghanistan filled through next summer."

The American Foreign Service Association crows:

AFSA hopes that those journalists, media outlets, and commentators who erroneously reported last October that the Department of State had been unable to fully staff the Iraq mission will now show as much zeal in reporting that, in fact, every one of these positions in both Iraq and Afghanistan for summer 2009 has been filled more than eight months in advance. Those journalists did a great disservice to the Department of State and its employees -- who have never shied away from hardship service in some of the most dangerous places on earth -- and we hope that these journalists will now set the record straight.

Duly noted.

Update: As one of those journalists who allegedly did a "great disservice to the Department of State and its employees," let me just point out that the department was posting open and withering criticism of the foreign service officers in question on its own blog. If the media owes American diplomats an apology, so do they. -Josh Keating

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

One of the more substantive moments of disagreement in last night's debate came when Joe Biden and Sarah Palin tangled over whether a "surge" was needed in Afghanistan.

When Palin said that "the surge principles that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan, also," Biden saw an opening, and mentioned that U.S. Gen. David D. McKiernan (left), the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, had just said that "Afghanistan is not Iraq" and that he wouldn't use the term "surge" to describe what is needed there.

"He said we need more troops," Biden emphasized, referring to McKiernan. "We need government-building. We need to spend more money on the infrastructure in Afghanistan."

To which Palin responded, "McClellan did not say definitively the surge principles would not work in Afghanistan. [...] The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan."

Democrats are scoring this exchange as a clear victory for Biden -- especially since Palin botched the commander's name -- but I am not so sure.

Here's why. McKiernan also said, "I don't want the military to be engaging the tribes" and indicated he would prefer to work through the central government. Given Afghanistan's history and tribal makeup, "It wouldn't take much to go back to a civil war," he warned.

I'm pretty sure Palin has little in-depth conception of what the "surge" principles mean and how they might apply in South Asia. (See here for a recent essay exploring this issue further.)

It's self-evidently true that Afghanistan is not Iraq. The problem, though, is that McKiernan is probably wrong about engaging the tribes -- and Biden ought to be very skeptical of the general's analysis. After all, one key reason the insurgency was tamed in Iraq was that the U.S. military essentially began paying tribal insurgents not to attack them. Just yesterday, the British ambassador to Kabul was caught warning that President Hamid Karzai's government is on the verge of collapse. Afghanistan has never had a strong central government. And as former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst and tribal expert Pat Lang points out, Afghan tribes are a fact of life with which the United States must deal:

The Afghan government of today is merely one of the many "players" in the complex socio-political situation in Afghanistan. If the United States backs the Karzai government with the idea of creating a highly centralized state in Afghanistan, then it is going down the road to re-creating the same social chaos that led to several years of ferocious tribal and factional revolt in Iraq.

Afghanistan is never going to be the kind of country that the neocons would like to see. Success in Afghanistan will require a realistic use (manipulation if you prefer) of the actual playing pieces on the board of Afghan Chess.

FILE; BILAL QABALAN/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's outspoken ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has gotten himself into some hot water over comments made in a meeting with France's Amb. François Fitou. A memo about the meeting from Fitou to President Nicolas Sarkozy has been leaked to the press:

According to Mr Fitou, Sir Sherard told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. "The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them ... They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic," the Ambassador was quoted as saying.

Britain had no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan, "but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one," he was quoted as saying. "In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan ... The American strategy is doomed to fail."

Cowper-Coles went on to state that an "acceptable dictator" was probably the best that the world could hope for in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Office denies that the memo is accurate, though Sir Sherard does have something of a reputation for going off his talking points. For a while, he was also maintaining one of the Internet's best diplo-blogs. I interviewed Cowper-Coles about the blog for FP's Seven Questions a year ago. The ambassador sounded quite a bit more optimistic about the coalition's progress and the Karzai government during that conversation.

If Cowper-Coles did make the comments, I certainly understand why his bosses in the FO might be ticked off. But as others have noted, his tendency to say things that others might not want to hear is both refreshing and needed when Western politicians have pretended for far too long that it was possible to just muddle through in Afghanistan.

You know the situation is bad when people are fleeing to Afghanistan:

Fighting between Pakistani troops and militants in a tribal region has forced some 20,000 Pakistanis to seek refuge across the border in eastern Afghanistan, the U.N.'s refugee agency said Monday. [...]

According to Pakistani officials, the fighting in Bajur has displaced as many as 500,000 people. Most have found shelter with relatives across northwestern Pakistan, though about 100,000 have taken refuge in camps set up by Pakistani authorities.

I didn't watch the debate last night. But I did read parts of it, and I was particularly interested in the candidates' exchange about Pakistan:

In one of the more heated moments of the debate, Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, argued that he would take the war to Osama bin Laden’s cave door, whether Pakistan cooperated or not. And it was Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee, who argued that without Pakistan’s cooperation, any such operation was doomed.

I have to say, McCain gets the better of the exchange. 

I've become convinced that Obama is making a huge mistake in endorsing the Bush approach, which will lead to disaster if it is allowed to continue. When FP asked five top Pakistani experts to tell us how to get Osama bin Laden, they all stressed passionately that the United States is heading down the wrong path by escalating a campaign of airstrikes in the tribal areas and, on at least one occassion, sending U.S. ground troops across the border.

There doesn't appear to be any genuine counterinsurgency strategy in place to do what General Petraeus did in Iraq -- protecting the local population from Taliban and other militant groups and seeking to win the hearts and minds of the Pashtun people. Instead, it's bomb, bomb, bomb. I understand the political appeal of getting bin Laden. But if you get the al Qaeda leader but turn Pakistan into a failed state, that is a strategic defeat, not a victory in the war on terrorism. 

Nor is there any apparent effort to rein in what Pakistan sees as India's attempt to encircle it in Afghanistan, or a major push to make progress on Kashmir. Many people seem mystified and frustrated by Pakistan's "double game" in the war on terrorism. Fear of India is the root cause.

Does Obama get all this? I understand the politics here. But as policy, the Bush approach to Pakistan is sheer folly.

Not a good day to be working at the press office of the Department of Defense. This morning, The Times of London released a video that purports to show civilian casualties in Afghanistan -- dozens at least -- from an American air raid in late August.

The Pentagon has insisted that civilian casualties in the attack were limited to the single digits, even as both the Afghan government and the United Nations put the number above 90. In a blog post last week, I wondered if this was a problem of counting methods -- deciding who is a civilian and who is a fighter.

That's a hard case to argue after watching the video [WARNING: graphic]. The Times says that a doctor shot the mobile-phone film the morning after the air raid. In the clip, casualties overcrowd a room filled equally with grieving men and women. The corpses include children. The chaos and pain of the moment is palpable.

As Human Rights Watch explains in a report released today, this is a serious problem -- and not just for America's reputation in Afghanistan. Civilian deaths, of which HRW says there were 321 this year, could easily provoke an even larger humanitarian crisis:

In every case investigated by Human Rights Watch where airstrikes hit villages, many civilians had to leave the village because of damage to their homes and fear of further strikes. People from neighboring villages also sometimes fled in fear of future strikes on their villages. This has led to large numbers of internally displaced persons. 

Hopefully, all this will be enough for Pentagon officials to reconsider their story. Until now, they have claimed that the incident began after forces came under fire while going after Mullah Sadiq, a Taliban commander. While the U.N. called upon civilian and government witnesses to verify its 90-something number, the Pentagon has pointed to retired Lt. Col. Oliver North, a Fox News correpondent who was indicted (but later cleared of charges) for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, to back its claim. A new investigation has been promised.

Last week, Major Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of troops in eastern Afghanistan, addressed the growing concerns with promises that Americans are avoiding casualties at all costs. He also complained:

The enemy routinely exaggerates the number of civilian casualties as propaganda, just pure and simple. They use lies and deceit as an asymmetric strategy."

All the more reason to have a transparent, indpendent investigation. With due respect to the general, the importance of ending civilian casualties -- or at least owning up to them -- is something we cannot exaggerate enough.

REZA SHIRMOHAMMADI/AFP/Getty Images

Two weeks ago, an operation aimed at Taliban insurgents in the Afghan village of Azizabad looked like a public relations mess for the United States. The United Nations reported that the airstrikes killed no less than 90 civilians. Protests shot up in the local town, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack.

Ninety civilian casualties? Nope, say U.S. investigators today, who put the number instead at just five. All the others killed -- somewhere between 30 and 35 people -- were Taliban insurgents.

Could it just be the way we are counting? Besides, who really is a civilian?

In fact, there is an official definition, found in a 1977 addition to the Geneva Convention -- but it reads like a confused doctors' diagnosis of exclusion. If you're not carrying a gun for somebody or for some reason, chances are you're a civilian. The lines gets blurry when you start feeding the fighters, housing them, or just plain looking like them. 

I suspect that the United States, perhaps more focused on controlling a rebounding Taliban insurgency, might define a combatant a bit more loosely than does the United Nations. Or perhaps the "civilian" witnesses that both camps interviewed simply had motives for either exaggerating or supressing the death count, depending on who was asking the questions. 

Questions should keep being asked, though, as long as one-liners like this one keep popping up: 

On Tuesday, NATO said it accidentally killed four children in Paktika province with artillery fire.

Not a good way to win hearts and minds.

Is the Washington Post having a little fun with the New York Times?

Here's a headline from Monday's NYT:

Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan

And here's today's offering from WaPo:

A Ragtag Pursuit of the Taliban

¿Quien es mas ragtag?

As other commentators have noted, the main factor that seems to be driving Pakistan's stepped-up campaign of violence is its fear of encirclement. Pakistan's spooks and strategic planners have watched with growing unease as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has grown close to India, and they have reacted -- or "rogue elements" have reacted -- by sponsoring attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan, creating shooting incidents along the Line of Control in Kashmir, and possibly even by organizing attacks within India proper.

India's response so far has been muted, since an escalation of the situation would only help hardliners in Pakistan and further undermine the civilian government. But today, India announced a new, $450 million aid package to Afghanistan. Looks like this proxy war is only just getting started.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

As if we needed more bad news from Afghanistan. Afghanistan's drug lords are now recruiting foreign chemists to help refine raw opium into heroin, the U.N. warns:

Most of the chemists come from Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, the UN says, and are going to some of Afghanistan’s most troubled areas to oversee the mixing of poppy resin with smuggled industrial chemicals to produce heroin of the highest quality.

Christina Orguz, Afghanistan country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Afghanistan’s drug lords were behaving like businessmen and recruiting the best talent available. Afghanistan now supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin.

The refining process requires large amounts of otherwise-legal chemicals, smuggled across the border into Afghanistan. Earlier this year, a shipment was seized in -- you guessed it -- Pakistan.

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

In recent interviews and speeches, Barack Obama has been painting himself a pragmatic realist on foreign policy. As we noted yesterday, such an approach seems somewhat curious for a candidate running on the theme of change.

With that in mind, I found a line from Eli Lake's recent essay in The New Republic on Obama's foreign policy particularly galling. Lake quotes Susan Rice, an Obama advisor likely on the short list for a high-profile position in his administration:

She described Obama's opinion of America's historic involvement with insurgency and counterinsurgency. She applauded the 1980s arming of the mujahedin resistance to the Soviets: "[S]upport for the Afghan resistance to Soviet aggression was the right decision in the 1980s."

While that policy may have shaken up the Soviets when they withdrew in the late 1980s, let's not forget that the United States is paying the price in Afghanistan now. As violence grows in Afghanistan, two familiar faces, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are showing up on the other side, U.S. News reports:

Ironically, these two warlords—currently at the top of America's list of most wanted men in Afghanistan—were once among America's most valued allies. In the 1980s, the CIA funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition to help them battle the Soviet Army during its occupation of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar, then widely considered by Washington to be a reliable anti-Soviet rebel, was even flown to the United States by the CIA in 1985.

As Obama continues to iron out his foreign policy, which has targeted Afghanistan as "a war we have to win," he should be loth to forget how we got there to begin with. Or has he been too busy on the campaign trail to watch "Charlie Wilson's War?"

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

I see that both Barack Obama and John McCain are now calling for more trigger-pullers in Afghanistan, where the situation is deteriorating fast. Obama wants to send about 7,000 additional troops, while McCain is calling for a "surge" modeled on last year's influx of U.S. combat brigades in Iraq. The main difference between the two men appears to be that Obama wants to redeploy troops from Iraq, whereas McCain would withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq at a much slower rate, if at all. [UPDATE: More on McCain's strategy here.]

As the New York Sun's Eli Lake notes, McCain has been coy about exactly what he would do in Afghanistan, as well as what his policy might be toward its problematic southern neighbor, Pakistan.

So, is "more troops" the answer? Not necessarily. "Sending more forces, by itself, is not enough to prevail," the Arizona senator acknowledged today.

What, then? It's hard to say until we see McCain's plan, but a plausible strategy for victory might look like something like this. Seth G. Jones, a sharp analyst at Rand who has recently returned from the region, argues in a new Web exclusive for FP that saving Afghanistan and its president, Hamid Karzai, requires a much broader political and military counterinsurgency approach than exists today. In a nutshell, improving the police, tackling corruption, and stabilizing Pakistan are the keys to success.

Check it out, and take a look at Jones's more in-depth series of reports on the subject for Rand.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Disneyland it's not, but war-torn Afghanistan is still hoping to lure international tourists -- at least those who don't mind venturing off the beaten path. Eight hours by car from Kabul, the country's Bamiyan province boasts the country's first National Park, complete with several crystal-blue lakes and Afghanistan's own picturesque "Grand Canyon."

The area is no secret to local Afghans, who have been coming to the Band-e Amir area for years. Local families come on the weekends to picnic, swim and rent boats, as do a few more adventurous foreigners.

While the area is beautiful and much safer than other parts of the country, violence in surrounding areas has cut into the tourist flow. So has a lack of funds according to provincial Governor Habiba Serobi, the country's only female governor:

Unfortunately the aid is always going to the more difficult areas where there are problems and conflict - that's where the international community puts more money."

While addressing the country's security situation is a necessary reality, it's sad to see it hamper development in other parts of the country like Band-e Amir--especially after all the effort and hope that went into the park's creation. The US government still strongly warns its citizens against traveling to Afghanistan, but hopefully, in time, we'll see more foreigners in Afghanistan with cameras rather than rifles.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Nineteen-year-old Mehboba Ahdyar, an Afghan runner featured in FP's photo essay "The Olympians of Afghanistan," has decided to seek political asylum in Europe due to the threats she has received in her home country. Ahdyar, who runs wearing a head scarf and full-length track suit, competes in events ranging from 800 to 3,000 meters and has been a poster child for the Olympics.

Earlier this month, though, Ahdyar went missing from a training facility in Italy. Several days later, she called her parents and told them she was seeking asylum in Europe because of fears for her life. She has received death threats on her mobile phone from Muslim extremists who object to a Muslim woman participating in sports. Earlier this year, her neighbors called the police, claiming she was a prostitute -- a charge that landed her father in jail until the matter was cleared up.

This whole incident is such a shame. This young woman simply wants to run in the Olympics, not run for her life.