Afghan President Hamid Karzai doesn't have the best record of passing laws to protect the people in his country, but that's not to say that he's doing nothing. Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery reports that Karzai just signed a degree to, among other things, bans the use of hand grenades for fishing:

In the decree, Karzai appeals to the public to help protect wildlife and the environment. He also called on high-ranking provincial officials to strictly apply the orders and penalize violators. 

Looks like the Afghan government has given European countries the perfect excuse to justify their unwillingness to ante up:

Nato's head says it could be difficult to persuade European countries to contribute more troops to Afghanistan because of controversial new laws.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the planned laws violated human rights and were unjustifiable when Nato troops were dying to protect universal values.

Critics say the law limits the rights of women from the Shia minority and authorises rape within marriage.

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

Der Spiegel is reporting that a raid by U.S. Delta Force commandos in Northern Afghanistan this month was set up by an Afghan drug clan to eliminate a rival:

The Americans stormed a guesthouse belonging to the local mayor, who had previously been friendly towards German forces, killing his driver, cook and bodyguard, as well as two of his guests. The US commandos also seized four people. According to the US military, one of those captured was the "target" of the operation, a "high-ranking" member of the terrorist organization al-Qaida.

However, sources in the intelligence community have told SPIEGEL that the US forces were apparently used by a drug clan to take out one of its rivals, who was reportedly one of the men who was killed or detained. The tip-off regarding the location of the al-Qaida terrorist had come from a source close to a member of the Afghan government in Kabul who is reputed to be deeply involved with the illegal drugs trade in Afghanistan.

The German forces who operate in the area are now furious that they're being blamed for the incident. 

With a NATO summit being held later this week, Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany will step up its training of Afghan police but ruled out committing more troops.

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As U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled his plans for Afghanistan today, the European Union's parallel announcement struck many as feeble: more cash and police trainers, troops not so much.

But might the EU actually have the right idea? As Robert Templer of International Crisis Group writes on The Argument today, police are exactly what both Pakistan and Afghanistan need. The forces today are corrupt and poorly utilized. Street-patrollers could restore security and confidence to chaos-wracked cities and towns. That most basic level of calm is no military task. 

Still, critics would have a point that the EU's proposal is far too feeble given the task ahead. Even with the doubling of police trainers, that will put just 400 on the ground. How about a octopoling? Then, I'll be impressed. Read Templer's full piece to understand why. 

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Over at The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder offers a peek into President Barack Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy -- to be unveiled tomorrow. Among the highlights:

• Obama plans to endorse a bill by Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairs Kerry and Lugar that would "emphasize results-driven cooperation with both countries" and "condition a significant increase in aid to Pakistan on measurable improvements in Pakistan's internal efforts to combat terrorism."

• The new policy apparently does not "express a preference for specific leaders"; in contrast, the Bush administration favored Afghan President Hamid Karzai and former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, at "the expense of rooting out corruption and terrorism." He notes: "The U.S. hasn't found a candidate it likes."

• The plan explains how Obama intends to use the 17,000 additional troops he's sending to Afghanistan: "4,000 will be tasked with training Afghan soldiers and the national police; the administration hopes to have more than 130,000 soldiers and 82,000 police officers trained by 2011. The rest of the troops will be given expanded counter-terrorism assignments and charged with defeating Al Qaeda, not just killing them in isolation."

• It also deals with Iran. Obama will "ask neighboring nations to form a working group to handle disputes and plan longer-term initiatives," Ambinder writes.

In a report made public today in The Guardian, a U.N. watchdog castigates Britain for its role in facilitating the United States' torture of detainees in secret prisons: 

The Special Rapporteur remains deeply troubled that the United States has created a comprehensive system of extraordinary renditions, prolonged and secret detention, and practices that violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment. This system required an international web of exchange of information and has created a corrupted body of information which was shared systematically with partners in the war on terror through intelligence cooperation, thereby corrupting the institutional culture of the legal and institutional systems of recipient States.

While this system was devised and put in place by the United States, it was only possible through collaboration from many other States. There exist consistent, credible reports suggesting that at least until May 2007 a number of States facilitated extraordinary renditions in various ways. States such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Indonesia, Kenya, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Pakistan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have provided intelligence or have conducted the initial seizure of an individual before he was transferred to (mostly unacknowledged) detention centres in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan, or to one of the CIA covert detention centres, often referred to as “black sites”. In many cases, the receiving States reportedly engaged in torture and other forms of ill-treatment of these detainees.

The special rapporteur, Martin Scheinen, states that British intelligence officers interviewed detainees in "so-called safe houses where they were being tortured" and that they "conducted or witnessed just over 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq." He calls for whistle-blower protections and the revision of numerous policies to safe-guard human rights. The revelations aren't that revelatory, given past reports on the participation of European countries in rendition and "enhanced interrogation." But the tone's especially fire-and-brimstone in this iteration.

And, the report comes as concern over the Britain'ss collusion in the mistreatment of detainees comes to a fever pitch. Last month, Binyam Mohammed, a British national arrested in Pakistan, returned to the U.K. after seven years of detention. He told papers, "Mentally right now, the result of my experience is that I feel emotionally dead....When I realised that the British were co-operating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked. They sold me out."

Additionally, members of parliament are calling for the government to release classified documents which detail its cooperation and participation with U.S. interrogators. And the country is considering accepting more prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, to hasten its closure.

All in all, it's an issue that's received an extraordinary amount of attention and garnered extraordinary public debate in Great Britain -- even more so than in the United States. And it isn't good news for poor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, just coming off the worst week ever.

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Helene Cooper has a good story today unpacking the issue of whether the United States should negotiate with elements of the Taliban. But I wouldn't worry about this point if I were U.S. President Barack Obama: 

And getting to the absence of war may require making the American public comfortable with the idea that the Taliban might not necessarily equal Al Qaeda.

For one thing, there's little evidencce the U.S. public has ever paid much attention to Afghanistan and I don't think that even now, with news organizations ramping up their coverage of the war there, that the vast majority of ordinary folks will care how CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus et al go about their business -- if they even know what is going on at all.

Americans just want the U.S. war effort there to succeed. Period. The "how" is a very Washington debate, I'd wager.

Looks like the Obama administration has been reading Parag Khanna. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today acknowledged that all of Afghanistan's neighbors will have to be involved if the NATO intervention is ever to succeed. Iran looks likely to be on the invite list for a proposed conference on Afghanstan to be held this month. 

It's a bold move with the potential of reopening negotiations between the United States and Iran -- on an issue of great importance to both countries.

And also not a bad move, if my diplomatic analysis counts for anything; the two spatting countries might even find some common ground. As Khanna pointed out, Iran is rapidly building up commercial investment in the country, and would surely prefer a stable host for its work.