To the Point

The Future of Afghanistan

The UN says it will take $28 billion to keep the world-s second-poorest country from regressing to chaos, but at this week-s conference of donor nations, Afghanistan will be lucky to get a third of that amount. As President Hamid Karzai links his country's survival to ending its massive opium trade, which could pry more money from western countries, regional warlords still control much of Afghanistan, and much-awaited elections have been postponed until September. What has Karzai-s government done for the lives of the Afghan people? Will the rest of the world help rebuild a troubled nation that could be a terrorist breeding ground? We get an update from an Afghan political activist, a former US Defense Department official and Afghanistan's ambassador to the UN, and get a progress report from Berlin from a political scientist attending the Berlin conference, Making News: GI's and Contractors Killed in Separate Attacks in Iraq The charred corpses of four foreign contractors were dragged through the Iraqi city of Fallujah today. Some were dismembered and hung from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River. Rod Nordland, Baghdad bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, calls area so dangerous that, despite victims' vehicles being ablaze, no ambulances or fire engines could get to the scene. Reporter's Notebook: Gas Prices Become the New Political Football The OPEC nations have turned a deaf ear to complaints about the mounting price of crude oil and agreed to reduce oil production. In California, gasoline prices have soared to $2.37 a gallon. Bill Schneider, senior political analyst for CNN, says as the price of gasoline in the US continues to skyrocket, President Bush and Senator Kerry have found ways to use the issue to attack one another.