NATO allies dismayed by US Defense Secretary's cutting the Afghanistan war short by one year without notice. Taliban is playing hard to get over peace talks while Pakistan retaliates for being cut out by letting an Al Qaeda front-man run for parliament.

A suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with 9,000 kilograms of explosives at the entrance to a NATO Combat Outpost Sayed Abad base in central Afghanistan's Wardak province Saturday, Sept. 10. The attack took place as America marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11and New York and Washington DC were on terror alert for a vehicle-borne strike.

The base targeted serves US Special Forces in Afghanistan. The truck bomb injured at least 89 US servicemen.

Taliban used insider intelligence to down the Chinook and avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden after inflicting a spate of precise hits to sow fear and alarm in the country ahead of the US forces' drawdown.

In a signal strategic achievement, the Afghan Taliban shot down a US helicopter killing 31 US troops and 7 Afghan commandos in the rugged Wardak province east of Kabul early Saturday, Aug. 5 – the single largest US loss of life in the Afghan War. Among the dead were 22 members of the elite Navy SEAL Six, the same unit which killed Osama bin Laden in May. debkafile:The Taliban has developed methods for attacking US choppers with the non-sophisticated RPG.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a vegetable grower, described as a "Conservative nationalist" and admirer of Churchill, Kant and Plato, is in Norwegian policy custody, accused of bombing government buildings in central Oslo and killing seven people, Friday, July 22, then 90 minutes later, killing 85 teens aged 13-16. He shot some with an automatic weapon; others jumped into the water and their bodies were later recovered. 

The Pakistani and US intelligence chiefs met in Washington to ease the strains between their governments. Their effort faced a mission impossible in view of the Saudi effort to distance Islamabad from its ties with Washington and strengthen the Taliban as the backbone of a future international Sunni militia.

Tuesday July 12, the day French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Afghanistan and stated that a quarter of France's 4,000-strong contingent would be pulled out by the end of 2012,  Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Kandahar strongman Ahmad Wali,was shot dead by a bodyguard. This was no coincidence, debkafile's sources note: Taliban was again refuting the accounts of the situation in Afghanistan presented by US, British and French leaders as having little resemblance to reality.

Iran has furnished Taliban with intelligence and cash to keep on torching NATO fuel trucks heading for Afghanistan as retribution against America for Stuxnet. The fuel scarcity could slow down the US-led war effort.

The US-British-Afghan force out to capture the Helmand provincial town of Marjah is still wide of its mark.

Its control does not go much beyond the municipal center and main police stations. But the Taliban has shown only minor resistance, saving its strength for the major showdowns ahead, most likely in Kandahar.