The New America Foundation's Steve Coll and Peter Bergen were on CNN the other day, and they made some encouraging comments to Wolf Blitzer:

WOLF BLITZER (Host): [...] What's the latest in terms of the hunt for bin Laden? Is the U.S. and the West any closer to finding him?

STEVE COLL (President, CEO of New America Foundation): Well, I'm not aware of any specific intelligence that has lit up the trail in the last six months or so, but the circumstances in which he's hiding have changed. And he's probably in Pakistan and there his popularity has declined considerably, and also you've got a new government in power, so the motivations on the Pakistani side are changing very quickly.

BLITZER: What do you think, Peter?

PETER BERGEN (New America's Schwartz Senior Fellow): Yes, I think the hunt for bin Laden is going very poorly. As Steve said, bin Laden's support is evaporating in the North-West Frontier Province, where he's almost certainly hiding. A recent poll showed he had dropped from 70 percent favorable in August of 2007 to 4 percent.

BLITZER: So wouldn't that make it easier for Pakistani or other -- or the U.S., Afghan troops, somebody to find him?

PETER BERGEN: Yes. And I think the short answer is yes. Also a very sharp decline in support for suicide bombings amongst Pakistanis. Unfortunately, on the other hand, you have got a Pakistani government which is doing a deal with some of the militants in the North-West Frontier Province at the same time. So as always, sort of a mixed message here with the Pakistanis.

If the Pakistanis can convince those militants to dime out their special guest, it might all be worth it.

(Hat tip: Sameer Lalwani)

John Moore/Getty Images

The State Department has just released its annual report on global terrorism, as it does every April 30. Some highlights (read the AP synopsis here):

• On the strength of Al Qaeda: "It has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas ... and [restored] some central control by its top leadership, in particular Ayman al-Zawahiri."
• On Al Qaeda's leadership: "Numerous senior al-Qaida operatives have been captured or killed, but al-Qaida leaders continued to plot attacks and to cultivate stronger operational connections that radiated outward from Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe."
• Terrorist attacks in Pakistan doubled between 2006 and 2007 and the number of fatalities quadrupled
• In Afghanistan, the number of terrorist attacks rose 16 percent in 2007
• Terrorist attacks in Iraq declined slightly between 2006 and 2007, but still accounted for 60 percent of terrorism fatalities worldwide, including 17 of the 19 Americans killed in attacks last year
• More than 22,000 people were killed by terrorists worldwide in 2007, 8 percent more than in 2006
• Iran is the world's "most active" state sponsor of terrorism
• In Iraq: 13,600 noncombatants were killed in 2007; suicide bombings in country rose by 50 percent; suicide car bombings were up 40 percent and suicide bombings outside of vehicles climbed 90 percent over 2006

The conclusions on Pakistan are likely to garner the most attention, and quite rightly. Watch for more calls like this one for a three-front war.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Today's big news is no surprise: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that Gen. David Petraeus will be promoted to head Central Command, pending Senate approval.

It's been a good week for the top American general in Iraq. On Monday, FP and Britain's Prospect magazine named Petraeus one of the world's top 100 public intellectuals, and he's doing remarkably well in the early voting.

It'll be interesting to see how Petraeus handles his new role. Matt Yglesias is cynical, calling the promotion "a pretty savvy political move" by Bush:

In this new office, Petraeus will have the appropriate kind of standing to argue that, no, those who say we ought to shift resources out of Iraq and toward Pakistan/Afghanistan are wrong.

Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, in contrast, is highly enthused:

The allegedly lame duck Bush administration has--if this report is correct--hit a home run. CENTCOM is the central theater of the war on terror, and the president is putting our best commander in charge of it.

I'd be surprised if Petraeus proceeds as Yglesias fears and Kristol hopes. The general strikes me as a pretty smart guy who is carrying out his mission to the best of his ability, but not some kind of fanatic about Iraq. Once he gets comfortable at CENTCOM, he's going to have to start weighing priorities and matching them up to resources across his entire command. He may well conclude that a strategic shift is in order, even if it takes some adjustment. He may also conclude, as his predecessor William J. Fallon did, that the United States is going to have to reach some kind of modus vivendi with Iran. But it's also worth noting that he'll mostly do so under the next U.S. president. According to Gates, Petraeus won't be taking the reins at CENTCOM until the fall, leaving him precious little time to effect any major changes on Bush's watch.

Anthony Cordesman; Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Yesterday, I attended the Jane's U.S. Defense Conference, an annual gathering bringing together American and European defense industry representatives with national-security officials. The theme of this year's conference was "the outlook for policy and defense business under the next presidency," an appropriate enough subject for the day of the Pennsylvania primary.

There was an overwhelming sense at the conference that despite billions more dollars in defense spending, the United States is not adequately preparing for the threats of the 21st century, nor is it giving the "warfighters" the resources they need to achieve victory. Major General Charles J. Dunlap of the U.S. Air Force, for instance, worried that an overemphasis on counterinsurgency was leading the U.S. to ignore the possibility of warfare with a "peer country" (read: China). Former Under-Secretary for Defense Acquisition Jacques Gansler argued that protectionism and the prioritization of congressional pork projects were causing the misuse of defense resources, necessitating a law stipulating that "Congress should not be making defense-acqisition decisions." The State Department's Deputy Director of Policy Planning Kori Schake lamented the miniscule size of her own agency's budget relative to defense, saying that every one of State's problems could be "traced back to chronic underfunding."

Oddly enough in a discussion of current national-defense priorities, Iraq and Afghanistan hardly came up until near the end of the day, when the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Anthony Cordesman gave a briefing on both conflicts. Given the weakness of both countries' political institutions, Cordesman feels that the term "counterinsurgency" ought to be abandoned altogether in favor of "armed nation-building." Since Cordesman sees far more progress toward this goal in Iraq, I asked him if troop withdrawal there would increase the likelihood of success in Afghanistan:

If we can move forward in Iraq in ways that seem possible, we may be down to 10 brigrades by 2009. You can't suddenly move those brigades to Afghanistan. They require retraining. They will have to be re-equipped and restructed to fight a different kind of war on different terrain, dealing with a different culture with different values.

I also have to say that while troops are important... far more important are the aid teams and advisory teams... rapid turnover of deployments in a country where personal relationships are even more important than they are in Iraq, the inability to take aid workers out into the field where they are really needed... The problem isn't troop levels and it won't be solved by moving out of Iraq."

It seems ironic that the takeaway message of a national-defense conference was that what we traditionally think of as defense can only do so much. The next president's foreign-policy team will need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time if it wants to begin to address the problems left over from the current one.

A study released today by the Rand Corporation finds that nearly 20 percent of military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression. For those interested in the math, that's some 300,000 soldiers. Only slightly more than half have sought treatment, telling researchers that they feared doing so would harm their careers. Here are some highlights from the first large-scale, nongovernmental assessment of the psychological and cognitive needs of military service members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past six years:

• 19 percent of returning service members report that they experienced a possible traumatic brain injury while deployed
• 7 percent report both a probable brain injury and current PTSD or major depression
• The study estimates that about 320,000 service members may have experienced a traumatic brain injury during deployment, from mild concussions to severe penetrating head wounds. Yet, just 43 percent reported ever being evaluated by a physician for that injury
• Half of service members say they had a friend who was seriously wounded or killed
• 45 percent report that they saw dead or seriously injured non-combatants
• Over 10 percent say they were injured themselves and required hospitalization

The Rand study is highly focused on the monetary societal costs of PTSD and depression among returning service members. The study asserts that, in the 2 years after deployment, these injuries will cost the United States between $6,000 to more than $25,000 per case, or as much as $6.2 billion in total. Of course, an equally high cost is being borne by the families and loved ones of these soldiers. Sadly, it's unlikely anyone will ever be able to quantify that.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, our Web editor, Blake Hounshell, ably deflated some of the optimism surrounding the surge. The security gains are impressive, he contends, but the deadly combination of underdevelopment and overeliance on oil make Iraq's political prospects grim. Far better to cut our losses and focus on Afghanistan ("the real fight against Al Qaeda").

But what is it that Blake would have us do in Afghanistan? If Iraq's political prospects are poor, Afghanistan's must be considered even worse. Afghanistan doesn't have oil (yet), but it is one of the world's least developed countries, with infrastructure decimated by a quarter century of war and no history of effective governance. Why then spend billions and risk hundreds of lives propping up a doomed democratic government?

On Blake's logic, it's hard to see the rationale. Commandos and Predator drones can wage the "real fight" against the al Qaeda luminaries in the Pakistani hinterlands with or without an effective central government. Is Blake then willing to jettison the doomed Afghan nation-building project? And, if not, why not?

Blake also believes that cutting Iraq loose will free up America's taxed diplomats to concentrate on managing the rise of China. This has become something of a mantra on the left recently (indeed, it's almost "drearily familiar"). And it's not implausible -- Iraq is consuming vast quanities of senior executive time and energy. But I've never understood what precisely the United States could be doing vis-à-vis China that the Iraq mission now renders impossible. The U.S. has been engaging China economically, tamping down Taiwanese separatism, and working with Beijing diplomatically on North Korea. In sum, an accomodationist stance designed to guide China toward responsible great- power status. What vast benefit would our China policy enjoy once we've cast off the nettlesome Maliki and millions of ordinary Iraqis with him?

It turns out the global food-price crisis that we've been following has a silver lining: Growing wheat is now more profitable than growing heroin for Afghan farmers.

(Hat tip: Paul Krugman)

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Training for the Olympics is tough, but dodging sniper bullets usually isn't part of a day's workout for most athletes. Unless you're Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq. She and three other Iraqis so far have qualified for this summer's Olympics, and they are doggedly determined to keep training despite the lack of resources and security. Abdul-Razzaq doesn't have proper running shoes, and she trains on a pockmarked track that she isn't officially allowed to use. She and her coach regularly get caught up in sniper fire on the way to and from training.

Meanwhile, archer Ali Adnan, who was attacked by militants linked to al Qaeda in 2006, practices mainly in his backyard; it's too difficult to travel in and out of his neighborhood. These Iraqi athletes, as well the Afghan athletes featured in FP's recent photo essay, "The Olympians of Afghanistan," have definitely got the Olympic spirit.

JIM WATSON

While NATO allies publicly debate their role in Afghanistan, attendees say a secret memo is circulating around the conference that plans for the alliance's exit from the conflict. Der Spiegel reports that Germany played a major role in drafting the "master plan" for the eventual removal of 47,000 NATO troops.

The document is actually less dramatic than it seems. In the short term it "calls for soldiers to gradually focus their attention more on training Afghan police forces and to hand over responsibility for actual conflict situations 'as soon as external circumstances and Afghan capabilities allow.'"

Wasn't equipping Afghan forces to eventually handle their own security always NATO's plan in Afghanistan? How is this a major change in policy? Der Spiegel hedges that the benchmarks layed out the memo might keep a NATO presence in Afghanistan until 2015, so it's possible that the document is just a fantasy meant to assuage the skeptical German public.

While the paper avoids a specific date for withdrawal, Germany Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung is optimistic about its implementation:

According to everything I've seen and to everything that other countries have added," Jung said of the paper, "I am very hopeful that it can be achieved in the forseeable future."

Mission accomplished?

CLAUS FISKER/AFP/Getty Images

At the current NATO summit, countries' troop contributions to the effort in Afghanistan has been a hot topic. Last week's FP List "Who's Left in Afghanistan?" listed the top five and bottom five countries in terms of the number of troops they had committed to Afghanistan. At the time, the top five were the United States (29,000 troops), Britain (7,800), Germany (3,210), Italy (2,880), and Canada (2,500), while the bottom five were Singapore (2 troops), Austria (2, sometimes 3), Ireland (7), Luxembourg (9), and Iceland (13*).

But these numbers can be somewhat misleading when it comes to determining who is pulling their weight, given that, for example, the U.S. population is about 1,000 times that of Iceland. So, another measure would be troop contributions relative to military-age population (defined as those between 20 and 39 years old**). When expressed this way, using updated troop numbers, it's tiny Denmark that comes out on top!

The Top 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.55
2. Britain -- 0.47
3. Norway -- 0.43
4. Netherlands -- 0.39
5. United States -- 0.35***

The Bottom 5 (troops per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Ukraine -- 0.0002
2. Georgia -- 0.0008
3. Austria -- 0.0009
4. Singapore -- 0.0016
5. Ireland -- 0.0053

Yet another way to crunch the numbers would be to look at troop fatalities relative to the military-age population. (Just the top five, and not the bottom five, are listed here because there are several countries with zero fatalities.) Sadly for Denmark, it's at the top again:

The Top 5 (troop fatalities per 1,000 people 20-39 years old):

1. Denmark -- 0.0099
2. Canada -- 0.0090
3. Britain -- 0.0056 (includes Ministry of Defense civilians)
4. Estonia -- 0.0053
5. United States -- 0.0051 (includes fatalities in Pakistan and Uzbekistan)

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images

As FP recently explored in the Military Index, the U.S. Army last year had a shortage of 3,000 captains and majors, a number expected to double by 2010. Behind these statistics are folks like 26-year-old Army Capt. Kirkner Bailey of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in Mosul, who says:

I have served my time; I've done two tours in Iraq. For the past three years of my life I have either been in Iraq or training to go to Iraq. I just know that there is more to life than this war, and my girlfriend, Shannon, and I are interested in finding out what that is. I can't speak to trends. But 8 of my 10 friends who are captains are leaving the Army."

When people talk about how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are hollowing out of the military, this is what they mean. The trend is particularly scary when you consider that officers like Captain Bailey have tremendous amounts of combat experience and the Army is counting on them to be the next generation of leaders.

Canada's forces in southern Afghanistan are getting a boost from the U.S. Marine Corps:

Roughly 1,100 of the 3,200 U.S. marines due in Afghanistan have already arrived for what's scheduled to be a seven-month tour in the war-ravaged country, where they are expected to buttress badly stretched Canadian resources. "I think everyone has embraced us, the Canadians in particular," Col. Peter Petronzio, the unit's commanding officer, said Monday.

The deployment is a stop-gap to bolster the Canadians, who have been battling insurgents and insisted on help as a condition of extending their deployment. After Germany, Spain, and several other NATO states refused (again) to send troops south, the U.S. offered a Marine unit. For the next seven months, the North Americans will be fighting shoulder to shoulder in the province. Hell, if the Mexicans chip in a brigade, Kandahar could join NAFTA.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

In recent weeks, the Taliban have threatened to burn down cellular towers throughout Afghanistan unless the main wireless companies shut down service between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. each night. Why? Taliban commanders are convinced that coalition forces are using the cell networks to track their fighters. (They don't seem to understand that while coalition forces might use the Afghan mobile networks for some intel, they certainly aren't dependent on them. Thank you, spy satellites.)

And now they've made good on their threat. In a country that is nearly wholly reliant on wireless communications (for lack of any land-line infrastructure), the main mobile networks (all privately run) have begun switching off service at night after attacks on 10 cell towers, the latest on Tuesday night. Score this round for the Taliban.

I can only hope that the frustration of not being able to make calls past dusk will inspire public condemnation of the men who forced the blackout. But then again, the government vowed to help the private sector stand up to Taliban pressure. And that unsuccessful stand hardly inspires confidence.

Eminent Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin is sounding the alarm about rising wheat prices in South Asia. Seeking to tamp down food inflation, Pakistan has reduced its exports of wheat to Afghanistan. That could lead to dangerous riots and civil unrest north of the Durand Line and provide a potent political issue for the Taliban to exploit. The flip side, Rubin notes, is that the rising prices of farm products ought to make crop-substitution programs more viable:

Nonetheless, the rise in price in wheat and other commodities (what is happening to horticultural commodities, flowers, essential oils, and so on?) presents an opportunity for investing in other cash crops and their marketing in Afghanistan. For all the rhetoric about how the drug economy is supporting insurgency and terrorism, where is the program to seize this market opportunity? And for all the talk of the importance of Afghanistan to global security, where is the program to assure Afghans of an affordable supply of basic food?

Indeed, the lack of creativity on this front has been astonishing. A few weeks back, I attended a Cato Institute luncheon with Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the United States. Noting that opium traffickers often loan farmers the money to plant and fertilize the opium harvest for the coming year, I asked the ambassador what programs are in place to provide loan support for farmers who want to grow alternative crops. According to him, there are essentially none. So if you're an Afghan farmer who wants to grow wheat or strawberries instead of opium poppies, you're largely on your own. And we wonder why Afghanistan now supplies 93 percent of the world's opiates.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

This morning, I attended the 2nd Annual International Woman of Courage Awards, presented by Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky in honor of Saturday's International Women's Day. Out of the 95 women worldwide who received the honor, eight were invited to personally accept the award at the ceremony.

The awardees are an inspiring group of women, including: Suraya Pakzad from Afghanistan, whose organization Voice of Women sheltered and counseled women even throughout a repressive Taliban regime; Virisilia Buadromo of Fiji, who heads up the Fiji Women's Rights Movement (FWRM), and pushes for family law reform, Eaman Al-Gobory from Iraq, a physician with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) who has worked tirelessly to find specialized medical care for Iraqis whose afflictions cannot be treated within Iraq; and Binal Thawabteh a Palestinian women's rights activist who has encouraged and trained women to seek public office, and recently founded a monthly newspaper that raises such hot-button issues as polygamy and honor killings. Other awardees hailed from newly independent Kosovo, Pakistan, Paraguay, and Somalia.

The rise of NGOs such as The Initiative for Inclusive Security reflects growing awareness that women's full participation in society isn't just about justice and fairness, it's also about security. Choosing to honor these particular eight women -- all from areas ravaged by conflict and instability -- clearly shows that this is also the line Rice means to take as she seeks to polish her legacy.

SHAUN CURRY/AFP/Getty Images

The Australian magazine that was the first to publish the news that Britain's Prince Harry was fighting in Afghanistan has issued this oddly late apology:

We regret this serious lapse of judgment. We sincerely apologise to all our readers, to the servicemen whose lives are at constant risk while serving at home and abroad, and to their families and loved ones."

Here's a better idea: How about the British "royal" family abandon its ludicrous, anachronistic position and stop living off the largesse of British taxpayers? Then the press wouldn't have such dilemmas to worry about, and Harry would be free to fight wherever and whomever he wants. And his father, Prince Charles, wouldn't have to pretend that his Caribbean vacation is really a humanitarian mission.

JOHN STILLWELL/AFP/Getty Images

Back in October, Passport noted a British war memorial that used Prince Harry's restriction from the Iraq conflict to honor those British citizens "brave at heart" but unable to serve in the troubled region. You may remember that the shocking memorial -- which depicts the prince's "war-mutilated" body lying dead with a desert vulture perched at his feet -- is meant to express the "unfulfilled patriotic aspiration" of soldiers who want, but are unable, to fight.

Today, in a story broken by Matt Drudge, it was revealed that Prince Harry has in fact been fighting in Afghanistan under a British media blackout for the past few months ... thus making what was formerly just the worst war memorial ever now the world's most awkward.

One of last night's Academy Award winners was Taxi to the Dark Side, which took home the Oscar for best documentary. It's a gripping film that centers on the fate of Dilawar, an Afghan man who was wrongly swept into the U.S. detention system and beaten to death accidentally by stressed-out, undertrained prison guards.

FP recently spoke with former FBI Special Agent Jack Cloonan, one of the experts interviewed for the film, about his own experience interrogating real al Qaeda detainees. You don't have to use force to make a terrorist break down and cry, Cloonan says -- just brains. Check out how to do it here.

An international jury recently announced the winners of the prestigious World Press Photo Contest for 2007. Here are the best of the best, reprinted with permission.

World Press Photo of the Year 2007
Tim Hetherington, UK, for Vanity Fair
American soldier resting at bunker, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 16 September

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Next -->

CATE GILLON/Getty Images

I'm not surprised Hamid Karzai recently blocked veteran British diplomat Paddy Ashdown from becoming U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, even though it looked to be a done deal. U.S., British, and U.N. officials were strongly behind Ashdown before Karzai pulled the plug during the latter's trip to Davos. Ashdown is known to be assertive and, frankly, effective. That no doubt worried Karzai, who is struggling to hold together his government and surely would not look kindly on an outspoken and influential international figure poking around dark corners of Kabul.

The search for Ashdown's replacement is still ongoing, but his op-ed in Wednesday's FT on what the international community needs to be doing in Afghanistan makes one feel all the more acutely that an opportunity was lost here. Ashdown paints a sober and realistic picture of the country's challenges, acknowledging that "defeat is now a real possibility" -- in sharp contrast to President Bush's recent rosy assessment. What's more, Ashdown had real strategies for change: winning over moderate Afghans, seriously tackling corruption, and working with, not against, the grain of the country's tribal structure. We can only hope that Ashdown's successor -- rumored to be NATO commander John McColl -- has the will to be so frank.