Five years ago this month, Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, was liberated from the tyranny of the Taliban regime and its “guests,” al-Qaida. Five years later, Afghanistan, and indeed the world, lives under the threat of another brutal tyrant: the narcotics trade and the terrorism it funds. Despite this threat, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who once so passionately announced that counter-narcotics was a top concern, appears to have wilted on the anti-drug message while the opium poppy, from which heroin is derived, flourishes to record levels – the area cultivated increased an astonishing 60 percent over last year, according to the United […]

LONDON — The head of the British Security Service (MI5), Eliza Manningham-Buller, who rarely makes public pronouncements, rattled off some chilling statistics Thursday about the Islamist terrorist threat to Britain. The service, she said, is investigating at least 30 top-priority terror plots. Under surveillance are about 200 groups or networks, comprising more then 1,600 individuals “who are actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here or overseas,” she said in a speech at Queen Mary College, London. Her under-strength operation (despite a manpower increase of 50 percent since Sept. 11, 2001) has had to make choices about which threats […]