The U.S. Treasury Department has added three prominent members of the Taliban and its affiliate the Haqqani Network to a list that prohibits any financial transactions with them by US citizens.

Those targeted “for supporting acts of terrorism” are Gul Agha Ishakzai, the head of the Taliban's financial commission; Amir Abdullah, former treasurer to senior Taliban leader Mullah Baradar; and Nasiruddin Haqqani.

The Haqqani Network is based in Waziristan, one of Pakistan’s remote tribal areas, and has recently been identified by US officials as one of the most effective and dangerous insurgent groups. It is led by Nasiruddin Haqqani’s brother and has been blamed for several bomb attacks in Kabul in the last year. The Treasury Department says Nasiruddin has made several trips to the United Arab Emirates to raise money for the Taliban.

US officials say Gul Agha Ishakzai is the head of the Taliban's financial commission and belongs to a council in Baluchistan, Pakistan that coordinates the collection of money. He is thought to be a close adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

According to a United Nations list, Amir Abdullah has traveled to the Gulf and Libya raising funds for the Taliban.

has served as treasurer to senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Berader and was the former deputy to the Taliban governor of Kandahar Province.

A Treasury statement said the designation of the three men was designed to “deprive these extremists of the resources they need to execute their violent activities."

One of the most respected voices among US foreign policy experts says the Obama Administration’s Afghan policy is not working.

Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and a veteran of several US administrations, writes in the latest edition of Newsweek: “Continued or increased U.S. involvement in Afghanistan isn’t likely to yield lasting improvements that would be commensurate in any way with the investment of American blood and treasure. It is time to scale down our ambitions there and both reduce and redirect what we do.”

Speaking on CNN’s American Morning Monday, Haass said Afghanistan was now “a sponge for American resources and it is a distraction. We out to be thinking militarily about what we might have to do in North Korea or Iran where we really do have vital national interests.” FULL POST

Pakistan has banned the theatrical release of a comedy about Osama bin Laden due to hit cinema screens in South Asia on Friday. Local movie distributors say they are appealing the ban, issued by the Pakistan Film Censor Board.

The film, "Tere bin Laden," [Your bin Laden] stars Pakistani pop singer Ali Zafar as an ambitious young journalist trying to land the scoop of a lifetime as a way to win a visa to live in the United States.

Made in the India's Bollywood "movie factory", it's a departure from the melodramas and musicals which dominate Indian cinematic fare. It’s also unusual in that it has a Pakistani in the starring role.

The trailer for "Tere bin Laden" suggests a movie of fast-paced slapstick comedy, and shows Zafar trying to coax an anxious and utterly inept bin Laden look-alike to impersonate the al Qaeda leader.

Watch the trailer at www.terebinladen.com

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Seven suspected militants were killed Thursday night in a US drone strike in Pakistan's Tribal region, two Pakistani intelligence officials told CNN.

The officials said a US drone fired three missiles at a suspected militant hideout in Misermada Khel, a village in North Waziristan. North Waziristan is one of seven districts in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border and has been the focus of drone attacks this year.

Based on a count by CNN's Islamabad bureau, Thursday's attack was the 41st US drone strike in Pakistan's tribal regions this year.

The officials asked to not be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

Journalist Nasir Habib contributed to this report

The European Union says it has reinforced security at the training base it runs in Uganda for Somali soldiers, in the wake of the Kampala terrorist attacks Sunday.

An EU military training team is putting a total of 911 Somali recruits through their paces at a camp in Bihanga, in the hills of south-west Uganda. A Portuguese squad is training the recruits to fight in built-up areas, while French and Spanish trainers are developing an officer corps.

A European official told CNN that while security at the base was being tightened, the attacks in Kampala would not affect the program. She said the attacks – in which 74 people were killed – underlined the need for the training, so that a new Somali army could confront Islamic extremists. The al Qaeda affiliate Shabaab, which is fighting to overthrow the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia, claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks. FULL POST

It's not your typical magazine. The layout is conventional enough, the typeface bold; there is more than a smattering of high quality photographs; and the graphic designers at al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have been given free rein. But then in the "table of contents" you're invited to read "How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" [note the American spelling.]

This is the first edition of Inspire – supposedly the online house magazine of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And it's certainly topical. It contains a long piece condemning western governments for moving to ban the full-face veil in public – just as the French National assembly passes such legislation. FULL POST

The bomb attacks in Uganda on Sunday night point to yet another front opening up in the battle with terrorism. No group has claimed responsibility but all the signs point to a Somali connection, and specifically to al Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate now battling the weak Somali government.

Uganda provides the bulk of the African Union peace-keeping force in Mogadishu, a force known as AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) whose main role is to keep the Somali government from being swept away by Shabaab and its allies.

Shabaab videos describe the peacekeepers as infidels and record ambushes and attacks on their vehicles. There was a devastating attack on the AMISOM headquarters last year – carried out by a Somali-American – that claimed 21 lives. And recently, the militants’ rhetoric against both Uganda and Burundi (which also provides troops for AMISOM) has become even more heated. FULL POST

The United States and its allies have plenty to worry about in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with al Qaeda, two Talibans, the Haqqani Network and a plethora of other militant groups active. But the United States and intelligence analysts believe another group, one of Pakistan's most powerful and well-established, is also broadening its horizons.

It is Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, which means "Army of the Pure." It was blamed for the attack on Mumbai, India, hotels in November 2008 in which nearly 200 people were killed over three days. That attack "shows the organization's global ambitions," said Dan Benjamin, the U.S. State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism. FULL POST

A Somali man from Minneapolis who is wanted on a slew of terrorism charges in the United States is fighting deportation from the Netherlands, and legal sources say the process could continue well into next year.

Mohamud Said Omar is accused of providing material support to the terrorist group al Shabaab, which is affiliated with al Qaeda and fighting a western-backed transitional government for control of Somalia.

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As the long hot summer wears on in southern Afghanistan, attention turns to Kandahar, the second-largest city and spiritual home of the Taliban. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, is fond of saying: "As goes Kandahar, so goes Afghanistan." He told a congressional hearing last month: "It is my belief that should they [the Taliban] go unchallenged there and in the surrounding areas, they will feel equally unchallenged elsewhere."

The senior Republican on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee agrees. Sen. John McCain of Arizona was in Kandahar on Monday. He told a news conference in Kabul: "The Taliban know that Kandahar is the key to success or failure. ... And if we succeed there, we will succeed in the rest of this struggle."

A long-heralded operation to deprive the Taliban of substantial influence in and around Kandahar is beginning to take shape. Hundreds of members of an elite police unit - the Afghan National Civil Order Police or ANCOP - have begun staffing checkpoints around the city in partnership with international troops. They are replacing ordinary police units, who are being retrained. FULL POST

Four years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the beautiful and historic Data Darbar shrine, close to the ancient walled city in Lahore, Pakistan. It was a sweltering night in August, but there were thousands of people, men and women and children, within its walls. It was so crowded that you could only shuffle slowly in the prevailing direction of the foot traffic. At the same time, it was remarkably serene, bathed in the light of thousands of candles. The Quran was recited constantly. It was a mystical experience.

That night, security precautions around the mosque were, at best, modest. It is not an easy place to protect, with several entrances and a constant throng of visitors. But in 2006,  Lahore  had seen little of the scourge of terrorism that was beginning to plague other parts of the country. FULL POST