Officials and analysts in Afghanistan say a mass escape by over 500 prisoners in the southern city of Kandahar would have been impossible without the collusion of prison staff.

Social scientists attached to the Second Marine Battalion in Afghanistan last year circulated a startling report on Pashtun sociology, in the form of a human terrain report on male sexuality among America's Afghan allies. The document, made available by military sources, is not classified, just disturbing. Don't ask, don't tell doesn't begin to qualify the problem. These are things you didn't want to know, and regret having heard. The marines got their money's worth from their Human Terrain adjuncts, but the report might have considered whether male pedophilia in Afghanistan has a religious dimension as well as a cultural one. I will explain why below.

General David Petraeus claimed limited success this week in the war within a war over the Taliban's planting of roadside bombs, but official Pentagon data show the Taliban clearly winning that war by planting more bombs and killing many more United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops since the troop surge began in early 2010.

Like the handful of Western correspondents immersed in Talibanistan 10 years ago, a long time before 9/11, I was dying to meet the one-eyed legend Mullah Omar. Fat chance; he was more mysterious than The Shadow, even in Kandahar. He had only been to Kabul twice - and left in a hurry. His three wives still lived in Singesar, his native village, a dusty basket of mud-hut compounds where no girls had ever been to school - after all there was no school; only Omar's own madrassa, little else than a tent with a soiled floor filled with mattresses for the pupils.

Now US President Barack Obama has plunged into the cesspool of AfPak diplomacy, he should make it a point to understand why Hamid Karzai feels so alienated. Since the US tried to oust him, the Afghan president has become deeply disillusioned, frustrated that the Americans are either too naive to comprehend that he has little choice but to seek reconciliation with the Taliban or are pursuing a hidden geopolitical agenda.

LASHKAR GAH, Helmand - Officials in Helmand province say they had warning of a day-long rebel attack on the town of Lashkar Gah last week, leading some residents to ask why it was allowed to happen and to last so long.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani authorities, having been embarrassed in the past over false claims, have not yet conclusively stated that Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP - Taliban Movement of Pakistan), was killed in a United States drone attack in the South Waziristan tribal area last week. A senior Pakistani security official has been quoted as saying that Mehsud had "probably been killed" along with about 12 militants in Shaktoee, a village close to the border with North Waziristan, but that the matter was being investigated.