Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has convened a jirga, or assembly of tribal leaders, to discuss a plan to reach out to the Taliban and broker peace June 2. Assailants with suicide vests, rockets and machine guns disrupted the opening ceremonies at the cavernous meeting tent on Kabul's Polytechnic University campus, sparking a 45-minute gun battle. The attachers apparently used women's burqas to sneak into the area. Two men were killed and a third was arrested. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. (AP, McClatchy Newspapers, NPR, June 2)

A top UN official on June 2 called on the US to cease CIA drone strikes in Pakistan until more accountability for the strikes exists. UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said that, despite their usefulness against terrorist organizations, the international community is kept uninformed of when and where drone attacks are authorized, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes virtually anywhere in the world without having to answer for its actions.

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid AKA Saeed al-Masri, operational leader for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was apparently killed in a US drone strike at the village of Boya near Miranshah, North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas. A Qaeda statement, viewed as accurate by US officials, says the death was within the last two weeks. Al-Yazid, an Egyptian, was a founder of al-Qaeda and considered by US intelligence to be the organization's No. 3 leader, behind Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Yazid is thought to have inherited the number three post after his predecessor, Abu Ubaidah al-Masri, died of hepatitis in Pakistan. "His death will only be a severe curse...upon the infidels," al-Qaeda supposedly said in a statement issued to jihadist websites and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. (The Independent, June 1; NYT, May 31)

The US Senate May 27 approved a $60 billion supplemental spending bill to help support a "surge" in troops in Afghanistan. About half the funds will go to the Pentagon for the additional 30,000 troops. The package also includes $349 million in economic and security aid for Pakistan. The vote comes just as the number of US military casualties in Afghanistan surpassed 1,000. (RTTNews, VOA, Daily Times, Pakistan, May 28)

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled May 21 in al-Maqaleh v. Gates that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts. The circuit court reversed the district court's ruling, which allowed habeas challenges by three Bagram detainees pursuant to the Supreme Court's test in Boumediene v. Bush. Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, delivering the opinion of the three-judge panel, stated that the district court underestimated the significance of Bagram being located in an area of armed conflict, which differentiates the defendants' jurisdictional status from those detained at Guantánamo Bay. The court held that the current case is more comparable to 1950's Johnson v. Eisentrager, where the Supreme Court ruled that US courts had no jurisdiction over war criminals held in a US-administered German prison.

A May 20 US Forces-Afghanistan press release states that military officials have launched a criminal investigation into allegations that a "small number of US soldiers were responsible for the unlawful deaths of as many as three Afghan civilians." The investigations also include allegations of illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy. No charges have been brought yet, but one soldier has been placed in pre-trial confinement.

A "mysterious" fungus that has damaged opium poppy crops in Afghanistan is sparking fears of US biological warfare. Helmand farmers interviewed by BBC Pashto service were convinced that "they" had deliberately destroyed the crops—the pronoun "they" being a euphemism for US secret agents, believed by the farmers to have sprayed the crops with the fungus. The UN drug control office in Afghanistan is conducting an investigation into the outbreak.

A proposed strategy document dubbed "NATO 2020," released at the alliance's summit in Brussels May 17, calls for an expanded readiness and capacity to operate beyond the borders of member states, and names the campaign in Afghanistan as a top priority. "NATO must be versatile and efficient enough to operate far from home," said former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who led a team of experts in writing the report. Already this year, 200 NATO soldiers have died in Afghanistan, compared with 119 in the same period last year. (NYT, May 17)