In the last decade, Afghanistan has made some dramatic development achievements. Access to basic health services has rocketed from nine percent to 64 percent. Under the Taliban, only 900,000 boys and almost no girls were enrolled in schools, while today, more than seven million children are enrolled in schools, 35 percent of whom are girls. Afghanistan has averaged 10 percent per year economic growth, is using a single, stable currency, and government revenues have grown to $1.65 billion, with a 400 percent increase in customs revenues since 2006 alone. With GDP per capita doubling since 2002, some five million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. In 2002, Afghan government institutions were barely functional. Most ministries did not have telecommunications, electricity, or even basic office supplies like pens or paper. Today, several ministries, like the Ministry of Public Health, which is led by a female doctor (who would not have been allowed to work, let alone lead, under the Taliban), are heading the development charge. Much of this progress has been possible due to the generous support of American taxpayers.

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Saying goodbye to a once-friendly land, now taken without a fight by the Taliban.

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The death of Osama bin Laden on May 2 in Abbottabad, Pakistan is undoubtedly a major setback for al-Qaeda and a significant achievement for the United States and its allies. In recent days, al-Qaeda purportedly has released several statements, including a lengthy two-part video, but its message since bin Laden's killing remains confused. While the first statements released by the group and its affiliates focused on praising bin Laden and vowing new attacks, the most recent video focuses instead on "one-man" terrorist attacks in the West, featuring mostly recycled footage mixed in with some new segments from American Adam Gadahn and Libyan al-Qaeda ideologue Abu Yahya al-Libi.

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The American raid last month that killed Osama bin Laden demands a reassessment of American strategic interests in Afghanistan and how we have been pursuing them over the past nine-and-a- half years. The most important aspect of the American relationship with Afghanistan today is the strategic partnership agreement currently under negotiation with Kabul. Despite the fact that this agreement will determine our military and economic assistance for years to come in Afghanistan, it remains out of the public debate. The administration hopes to sign this agreement before U.S. troops begin withdrawing next month, but the urge to sign a deal before then means the United States risks prematurely ceding what bargaining power it has with Kabul without receiving meaningful commitments in return.

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For nearly two years, the United States has been trying something completely new in Pakistan. In 2009, with President Obama's backing, Congress passed a bold piece of legislation that committed the United States to support Pakistan's people and its economy, as opposed to focusing almost exclusively on the country's military. The United States would try to help Pakistanis entrench the transition to democracy they won in 2008, and -- for the first time -- it seemed the United States would place an equal emphasis on long-term development and short-term stability in Pakistan.

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Saif al-Adel, the former Egyptian military officer and onetime leading member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group (EIJ), is widely reported to have been chosen as the temporary head of al-Qaeda, until a new emir is chosen to replace Osama bin Laden, who was killed by a Navy SEAL team in Pakistan on May 2. However, this alleged appointment has not yet been announced officially by al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda Central, which is thought to be based along the border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has made two public announcements since bin Laden's death. The first was the confirmation of bin Laden's death, and the second was the release of an audio recording which bin Laden had made a few days before his death, commenting on the ongoing Arab revolutions. These two releases prove that al-Qaeda was able to continue its media work despite bin Laden's death, and in spite of their likely concern that the Americans may have gained important information from the al-Qaeda leader's compound which could allow them to go after other figures in the group. But the lack of public statement about al-Adel's appointment raises one inescapable question: Why wouldn't al-Qaeda be able to go "official"' with a statement and an audio tape announcing al-Adel's appointment instead of remaining silent about such a crucial decision at such a crucial time.

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The past week has witnessed major attacks on key Pakistani military and intelligence facilities by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that for the past several years has fought an increasingly brutal and brash war in the heart of the Pakistani state. Yet while the attacks, and in particular the lengthy siege of the Mehran naval base in Karachi, have brought condemnation on the military for lax security procedures, few within Pakistan have openly questioned the state's long-running dance with militant groups, many of whom cooperate closely while alternately working with and fighting Pakistan. But a string of events in the past few years have made the question of Pakistani support for - or allowance of - terrorist and militant groups unavoidable.

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Afghanistan needs to stop blaming a washed-up spymaster for all of its problems.

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The strange world of Afghan weddings and the dark side of early marriage.

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The reported naming of the Egyptian Saif al-Adel as the "interim" leader of al Qaeda may mark the opening of a new chapter in al Qaeda's history and the United States' ongoing struggle against the group. But a closer look at al-Adel's past reveals details about another problem that plagues us today, the dangerous nexus between al Qaeda and the Pakistani militancy. It's an intersection that plays out not only in remote tribal areas in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in the heart of Pakistan in urban centers such as Karachi, the Manhattan of Pakistan with Pizza Huts, McDonald's, and a slippery network of back alleys teeming with militancy and radicalism.

Rather than being a recent development, the close working relationship of these different networks emerged dramatically nine years ago, after the Jan. 23, 2002, kidnapping of Wall Street Journal Islamabad bureau chief Daniel Pearl. In reporting released earlier this year by the Pearl Project, a faculty-student investigative reporting project at Georgetown University that I co-direct, we reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, was sitting comfortably in Karachi on Pakistan's western coast when he got a call from Saif al-Adel (whose real name is reportedly Mohammed Ibrahim Makkawi) that sent him across town to take over the kidnapping of Pearl, setting off a chain of events that would culminate in the latter's execution.

Al-Adel had significant clout at the time not only in al Qaeda, but also in other militant circles. He is said to be between 48 and 51 years old, and by most accounts once served as a Colonel in the Egyptian special forces. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, al-Adel reportedly provided military and intelligence training to al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad members in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan. Pakistani militants trained alongside their former Arab comrades from the anti-Soviet struggle, taking in the same lessons and much of the same ideology. The FBI wants him in connection with the 1998 East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings, and KSM told FBI agents that al-Adel may have dispatched "shoe bomber" Richard Reid to Karachi to meet with KSM to discuss Reid's plan to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet.

Pearl was chasing a story trying to identify Reid's facilitator when he stumbled across the path of Omar Sheikh, a British-Pakistani militant who had been arrested in 1994 in New Delhi, India, for kidnapping foreign tourists, including an American. In 1999, Sheikh was released in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines plane. He was flown to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where, according to his interrogation file, none other than Osama bin Laden, who was living at the time at the Kandahar airport, threw him and other released Pakistani militant leaders a party for "iftar," the daily sunset meal when Muslims break their fasts during Ramadan. Omar Sheikh slipped quietly into Pakistan, stopping first in Karachi before settling down in his hometown of Lahore. In January 2002, the United States was pressing for Sheikh's extradition, but he was wandering freely in Pakistan, newly-married and the proud father of a young son, when he learned of Pearl's reporting.

Sheikh laid a trap in Karachi, where he had a trusted network of militant contacts, leading Pearl there on the promise of an interview with a Muslim cleric suspected of being Reid's facilitator. Pearl left my home in Karachi on Jan. 23, 2002, and never returned. Within days, we received a "proof of life" -- ransom photos of Pearl with a gun to his head.

The kidnapping did not, however, start as an al Qaeda operation. While Shaikh had extensive contacts with the al Qaeda leadership, he instead relied on his network, which would eventually include militants affiliated with an alphabet soup of Pakistani militant organizations that have emerged as the Punjabi Taliban: Harkat ul-Mujahideen (HUM), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Harkat-ul-Islamiya (HUI), and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group believed to be responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attack.

KSM told FBI agents that he didn't know who had contacted al-Adel about Pearl, but, according to our investigation, there were only two operational cells in Pakistan that had knowledge of Pearl's location, and they included only Pakistani militants. There were seven non-al Qaeda Pakistan militants in the logistics cell that trapped Pearl. They were led mostly by local "emirs," or leaders, of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Another 10 non-al Qaeda Pakistani militants were in the cell holding Pearl. They were affiliated with Harkat ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Harkat-ul-Islamiya, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, reflecting the fluid nature and overlap of Pakistan's militant groups.

They also often worked with al Qaeda. In a Pakistani police interrogation report, one of the Pakistani militants said that one of his jobs was to help al Qaeda hide in Pakistan. He said he ferried Arab members of al Qaeda from Quetta to Karachi, disguising them as patients in ambulances. 

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The Rack: Ron Moreau, "The Taliban After bin Laden," Newsweek.

By hook or by crook

The Journal reports that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) is prodding the insurgent Haqqani network into peace talks with the Afghan government, resisting U.S. pressure to go after the group's strongholds in North Waziristan (WSJ). U.S. officials consider the Haqqanis one of Afghanistan's most violent and effective insurgent groups, and the increased efforts to target the Haqqanis, including drone strikes and concern about a cross-border raid, reportedly led worried Haqqani members to vacate their compounds in the North Waziristan capital of Miram Shah in the wake of the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

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At a time when pressure is piling up on the Obama administration to re-examine its relationship with (and aid to) Pakistan, the post-Osama narrative in the popular Pakistani Urdu press reflects some of the far more complex socio-political challenges facing Pakistan, challenges which will impact the country's engagement with the rest of the world. While the commentary and analysis in the English-language media has been quite similar to that of the rest of the world, the reactions and comments in the Urdu press are quite different in tone and content, focusing consistently on the importance of upholding Pakistani pride and sovereignty.

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The legend of the bin Laden hunter continues.

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Can Afghanistan's army stand on its own?

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