Afghanistan's president demanded that aid donors make good on their earlier pledges to provide $4.5 billion for rebuilding. But donors are wary of the rampant corruption in the country, which the government is not making a big effort to deal with. But many of the donor nations are having trouble getting their own bureaucracies to actually obtain and ship the promised aid.
Former Taliban leader Mullah Omar showed up on al Jazeera (on tape) saying the Taliban would return to power. The Afghan government has long believed that Omar was alive and being protected by his tribal followers in southern Afghanistan.
Padsha Kahn, chief of the Zardan tribe, has fled Khost after being defeated by the government appointed provincial government. The Zardan's feel they should run the province, but are disliked and distrusted by the other tribes in the region. Control of Khost enables one to control lucrative smuggling and trucking routes.
US troops searching the southeast captured two al Qaeda members and found several large weapons caches. At the same time, someone fired four RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) rockets at a US base. Three of the warheads were duds and the other landed far from the target. The RPGs were fired from over a kilometer away, and RPGs lose most of their accuracy after a few hundred meters.
