Time once again to play “My Favorite Warlord.”

Once a week or so I do a Google News search on Rashid Dostum, warlord, US ally, assistant minister of defense to the mayor of Kabul, likely opium trafficker and suspected war criminal. If anything bad is happening in Afghanistan, odds are that it’s either connected to Dostum or that whoever is reporting on whatever is happening will find occasion to mention him. This week, the search produced an article from the Beeb about UN concern over the increasing control the Taleban exercise over portions of the country.

Taleban forces are retaking parts of Afghanistan as the post-war government shows signs of weakening, the UN's top peacekeeping official has said.

In a regular briefing to the Security Council, Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno said many causes of insecurity "remain unresolved".

"In several border districts (near Kandahar and Paktika), Taleban have been able to establish de facto control over district administration," he said.

Germany has agreed to send 450 troops to deploy around the northern city of Kunduz where President Hamid Karzai launched the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme on Friday.

But so far no other countries have committed to the international force which the Security Council last week authorised to deploy outside the capital Kabul.

"There are worrying signs that the political compact that has allowed the government to press ahead... in spite of the differences of its individual members may be weakening," Mr Guehenno said.

Occasionally the Dostum search doesn’t produce anything particularly interesting, in which case I fall back on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, former Prime Minister of Afghanistan, former US ally and now, following an attempt last year by the CIA to take him out with a Predator drone, Taleban ally. This week’s Hekmatyar search produced an AP article regarding a “new species” of terrorist thought to be infiltrating into Kabul.

KABUL, Afghanistan Oct. 22 � A "new species" of well-trained terrorist has infiltrated Afghanistan's capital, posing an increasing threat to the already shaky security situation in the country, the head of an international peacekeeping force said.

According to intelligence reports, the militants come from Saudi Arabia, Yemen or the Russian republic of Chechnya, Lt. Gen. Goetz Gliemeroth, commander of the 5,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, said on Tuesday.

He said many already have been caught or killed in operations along the rugged, mountainous border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida operatives are believed to be hiding.

"Apart from, if I may say so, the typical terrorist, we've got a new species," Gliemeroth said at a regular briefing. They are "excellently trained and ... they also have improved technique at hand."

Yemen and Saudi Arabia have conducted anti-terrorist raids following repeated calls by the United States to do more to curb Islamic militancy after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America.

Gliemeroth said it was unclear if the terrorists were working in tandem with a particular group.

"Whether al-Qaida or special envoys from (renegade warlord) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or representatives of al-Qaida, I guess it's a mixture," he said. "Against suicide bombs, there is no waterproof protection."

The German general said their intention was to bring the international terrorist campaign to Afghanistan. "Apart from doing harm to the integrity of the country ... they will try to infiltrate Kabul because it is the capital."

Looking for Gulbuddin also produced a ton of hits related to Rummy’s dark memo because he mentions the lack of progress in locating Hekmatyar, Mullah Omar and other prominent troublemakers.

The most intriguing hit I’ve gotten on Dostum is this article from the March 20 Topeka Capitol Journal covering a local man’s drug distribution trial.

The $170,100 confiscated by federal agents from a storage locker rented by the first wife of William Leonard Pickard was money donated to a warlord from Afghanistan, then given to Pickard for safekeeping, Pickard testified Thursday in U.S. District Court.

Pickard, 57, and Clyde Apperson, 47, are charged with conspiracy and possession of LSD with intent to distribute more than 10 grams. The two men were arrested in November 2000, Apperson just after he drove a truck containing an LSD laboratory from a converted missile silo at Wamego and Pickard the next day at a farm several miles west of Wamego.

As of Thursday, Pickard had been on the witness stand answering questions by his defense attorney, William Rork, for 6 1/2 days.

In 1996, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, now the deputy defense minister of Afghanistan, visited the United States and received many cash donations while in this country, Pickard testified. Pickard had advised an associate of Dostum's not to pay cash to buy a home in the United States, and eventually Pickard received a briefcase containing the money to keep for Dostum, Pickard said. Giving the money to Pickard was a reflection of the trust the associate felt for Pickard, Pickard testified.

On April 11, 1997, Deborah Harlow, Pickard's first wife, rented a locker under the name Deborah Conners because Pickard and Harlow feared the associate, who knew Harlow's home address, after he defected from Dostum to the Taliban.

Last week, Pickard testified he tried to persuade American officials to adopt his plan to convince Afghan warlords to return some Stinger missiles to the United States, along with perhaps 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of heroin, in exchange for a shorter sentence for Mohammed Akbar, an Afghan heroin smuggler serving time in an American prison. The exchange never took place because American officials wanted arrests along with the heroin confiscation, and an unnamed American agency didn't want to participate in the Stinger missile deal, Pickard said.

It’s a small, small world …