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The New York Times devotes 800 words this morning to the startling conclusion that international borders are porous.

The Chaman crossing -- marked on the Pakistani side by the three-story Friendship Gate -- should presumably be among the most secure in the country: it is the sole crossing between Kandahar, the birthplace of the Afghan Taliban, and Baluchistan, which is, according to American officials, home to Taliban commanders who control many Afghan fighters. But Taliban fighters -- anyone, really -- can cross and smuggle weapons and drugs...

You could write this about literally any two countries. The Egypt-Israel border should be "among the most secure" in the world, but hundreds of impoverished African migrants find a way to sneak across every year. The border between North and South Korea should be locked tight, but defectors find a way out.

After months of hyping the latest Helmand surge, ISAF officials are launching one last PR blitz before Operation Moshtarak, a large assault on the town of Marja. Al-Jazeera reports that it will be the largest offensive since the 2001 invasion, led by more than 1,700 Afghan soldiers. The New York Times has been hyping the Helmand offensive all week. And a well-publicized overnight operation in Nad Ali killed roughly 30 Taliban fighters (of course!).

I took yesterday off from blogging to catch up on some "real" work, so I'm just now reading up on the latest developments from Afghanistan.

First, there was a bit of good news yesterday: Kai Eide, the head of the United Nations mission in Kabul, announced that he will step down when his term ends in March. Eide insists this isn't a resignation -- "I'm just not renewing my contract," he said yesterday. But it's clear that he sees the writing on the wall, after months of controversy over his handling of the Afghan election.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Karl Eikenberry really did not make news in their first round of congressional testimony yesterday -- despite the thousands of stories and blog posts written about the hearings.

I'm alternately amused and annoyed when I read headlines like McChrystal backs Afghan plan to skeptical Congress. McChrystal is an officer in the United States military; the president of the United States is his boss. He has a simple choice: He can support the president's plan, or he can resign. If he does the former, it's not newsworthy.

Same goes for headlines about how McChrystal thinks the war plan will succeed. What did everyone expect? That he would take the witness stand yesterday and say, "sorry, guys, we're fucked"?

Jari Lindholm, a war reporter from Finland, makes a good point about the CIA's relationship with Ahmed Wali Karzai. Lindholm notes that Karzai is not on the Pentagon's Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List -- its hit list -- which includes 50 other Afghan drug lords.

In other words: The CIA is eliminating Karzai's competition for him.

The New York Times reports that Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, gets regular payments from the CIA to -- among other things -- rent them a house in Kandahar.

This story went online last night, so I'm sure many of our readers have seen it by now. Your normally talkative blogger found himself too frustrated to post about this last night, so I let it sit until this morning.

Why is this story so important?

David Cohen, the Treasury Department official in charge of terrorist financing, says al-Qaeda is having money problems. He terms it a "funding crisis," according to the BBC, and says the group has already made several fundraising appeals this year.

"We assess that al-Qaeda is in its weakest financial condition in several years and that, as a result, its influence is waning," Mr Cohen said from Washington.

Cohen didn't go into detail, but I would assume al-Qaeda's financial woes are driven both by its low popularity among Muslims and by good police work at asset control offices in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The Taliban, on the other hand, is apparently quite flush, thanks to the opium trade and donations from the Gulf. (Richard Holbrooke said in August that Gulf donors actually account for the majority of Taliban funding.)

Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, Afghanistan's former defense minister, is a close Karzai ally who has a good chance of becoming the country's next vice president. The New York Times points out that he's also a drug lord.

He had a history of narcotics trafficking before the invasion, the C.I.A. reports showed. But what was most alarming in the reports were allegations that he was still involved after regaining power and becoming defense minister. He now had a Soviet-made cargo plane at his disposal that was making flights north to transport heroin through Russia, returning laden with cash, the reports said, according to American officials who read them. Aides in the Defense Ministry were also said to be involved.

Two observations here. First, is anyone surprised? Heroin is a hugely profitable enterprise, and also the largest crop in Afghanistan. It should surprise nobody that a prominent Afghan official is involved with the drug trade.