Afghanistan summary here and here.

And from Korea, this.

Pakistan summary here and here.

More shoes to drop.

A civilian grand jury is investigating the deaths of two detainees at a U.S. jail in Afghanistan nearly five years ago, according to current and former service members who said they’ve testified in the probe.

The rare federal court inquiry follows the convictions in courts-martial of six soldiers on charges of abusing detainees, including the two men who died. Nine other servicemen were charged by military prosecutors, but they were either acquitted or the charges against them were dropped.

It’s unclear who the targets of the new investigation are or what may have prompted it now; federal prosecutors declined Monday to even confirm it.

A former military defense attorney said he had heard of only one other instance in which civilian prosecutors have picked up a case that military prosecutors had already handled.

In interviews over the past week, three soldiers and an officer from an Ohio-based 377th military police reserve company told The Associated Press they were called as witnesses to the federal grand jury in northern Virginia near the Pentagon. The 377th ran the jail at Bagram Air Field.

The men said they had been told the grand jury’s targets were no longer in the military.

Federal law allows the civilian prosecution of service members who have left the military since the crime occurred, even if military authorities previously have brought charges.

[snip]

Jim Rybicki, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, said in an e-mail that he could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. Article

Tracing the downward spiral:

rotection (AOHREP), said there were many reasons why the future of the country’s environment was grim: more than 26 years of armed conflict, population displacement and extended drought; the misuse of natural resources; the lack of a law enforcement authority; and the lack of appropriate policies for the environment.

“In the last two decades, we have lost over 70 percent of our forests throughout the country,” Hotaky told IRIN on 29 July in the capital, Kabul.

Extensive deforestation has had multiple social, environmental and economic implications for millions of Afghans, Hotaky added.

One of the immediately visible humanitarian implications of deforestation is the country’s increasingly vulnerability to various natural disasters, specialists say.

“Recently, we witnessed increasing numbers of floods, avalanches and landslides as a result of deforestation,” said Hazrat Hussain Khaurin, the director of the forests and rangeland department in the food and agriculture ministry.

According to government statistics, until the early 1980s, about 19,000sqkm of Afghanistan’s 652,225sqkm territory was covered by forests, which were a sustainable source of income for the government and its citizens.

Because of the many years of war since then, Afghanistan now faces the complete eradication of its forests, Khaurin said.

“Neither the government nor impoverished Afghan farmers have the basic technology or required resources to resist widening desertification,” said Khaurin. “Thousands of hectares of agricultural land have been covered by moving sands in seven southern and southwestern provinces,” he added.

Bushes and other plants that once created natural buffers against sand movement and flash floods flows have been used as fuel by local residents for many years.

Many Afghan refugees who return to their rural communities from neighbouring countries find it impossible to cultivate infertile and arid land with very little irrigation and farming facilities.

“Desertification has exacerbated already widespread poverty among many Afghan farmers who seem hapless to tackle problems created by this natural crisis,” said Hotaky of the human rights and environment protection body.

Against a rapidly increasing population, which requires food, fuel and shelter, among other things, the volume of Afghanistan’s agricultural produce has decreased by 50 percent over the past few years, the food and agriculture ministry said.

For decades, Afghan governments who have come to power have concentrated on winning wars, ensuring stability and solving political dilemmas while paying little attention to a degrading environment, specialists say.

[snip]

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in a study found that Afghanistan’s long-term environmental degradation is caused, in part, by a complete collapse of local and national forms of governance.

Should Afghanistan fail to address its environmental problems within its reconstruction period, it will face “a future without water, forests, wildlife and clean air”, according to UNEP’s Post Conflict Assessment for Afghanistan. Article

Noted mostly FYI, as it comes across more as a P.R. puff release than as anything else.

The agenda for the first meeting of Pakistan and Afghanistan Peace Jirga, scheduled on August 9 in Kabul, has been finalized.

[snip]

During the three-day talks, he said the two sides would discuss strengthening of bilateral relations on the basis of good-neighborliness, respect for territorial integrity and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

He siad other points of the agenda include appraisal of factors and circumstances which contribute to the growth of terrorism and militancy and devising a bilateral mechanism to combat terrorism through cooperation and joint strategy.

He said these also include enhancing goodwill and creating further confidence building measures and mechanisms, including through interaction between political representatives, civil society, academicians, media, sports and cultural links.

[snip]

To a question as to how the pro-Taliban or anti-Pakistan sentiments would be dealt with during the joint Jirga, he said the whole idea is being discussed on a positive note with positive results already achieved. He said both the countries are working on this point and added that the host country would ensure the security. Article