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(AP) QUETTA, Pakistan – A suicide bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in southwest Pakistan on Friday. The assault sharply drove up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country battered by massive flooding.

To the northwest in Pakistan’s restive tribal regions, two suspected U.S. missile strikes killed at least seven people in an area controlled by one of the main groups battling Americans in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Two other militant bombings left at least two people dead and several wounded on a day convulsed by the violence that threatens the stability of Pakistan’s weak civilian government — an essential but problematic Western ally in the fight against Islamist militants.

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Pakistan Taliban Claim Suicide Bombing Killing 43 Shiite Muslims

KABUL, Afghanistan — The top US military commander in Afghanistan says the sometimes strained relationship between the US and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is solid.

Gen. David Petraeus (peh-TRAY’-uhs) says Karzai shares US concerns about corruption in his country. Petraeus acknowledged “friction” over the case of a close Karzai aide arrested this summer in a corruption probe. The aide was released after Karzai intervened.

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Robert Gates To Meet With Karzai, Petraeus In Afghanistan

August’s slow-news period would have seemed to me to be a prime period for some sort of Birther flare-up, but just past the deadline comes the news that Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney has signed an affidavit in support of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin.

Lakin — a Birther cause-celebre — is facing a court martial after refusing to report for deployment to Afghanistan because he doesn’t believe President Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States.

It’s one of the more unfortunate instances of Birther Kool-Aid overdose. And now, McInerney has jumped aboard. Dave Weigel reports that McInerney is — or at least was — “a serious person”: “He’s a West Point graduate who ran the Alaskan air command during the Exxon Valdez disaster.”

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Fox News Military Analyst Comes Out As Birther

Though it has received only moderate attention in the western press, the torrential flooding of large swaths of Pakistan since late July may be the most catastrophic natural disaster to strike the country in half a century. But even greater than the human cost of this devastating event are the security challenges it poses. Coming at a time of widespread unrest, growing Taliban extremism, and increasingly shaky civilian government, the floods could lead to the gravest security crisis the country–and the region–has faced. Unless the international community takes immediate action to provide major emergency aid and support, the country risks turning into what until now has remained only a grim, but remote possibility–a failed state with nuclear weapons.

Since the upper reaches of the Indus and other rivers in Northern Pakistan first flooded their banks over three weeks ago, the floods have spread to many other parts of the country, submerging dozens of villages, killing thousands, uprooting some 20 million people, and leaving millions of poor children and infants at terrible risk of exposure to water-borne diseases. But the next few months could be even worse, as the collapse of governance and growing desperation of flooded areas leads to increasing social and ethnic tensions, terrible food shortages, and the threat that large parts of the country, now cut off from Islamabad, will be taken over by the Pakistani Taliban and other extremist groups.

A key part of the security problem lies in the already precarious situation of the regions most affected. The floods and heavy rain have caused the worst damage in the poorest and least literate areas of the country where extremists and separatist movements thrive: this includes the northern region, near Afghanistan, but also parts of Balochistan and Sindh provinces in the south. By contrast, central Punjab, the country’s richest region, with incomes and literacy about double that of other parts of the country, has been relatively unscathed by the disaster. The longstanding resentment by ethnic groups in the smaller provinces against Punjab is thus likely to increase.

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Pakistan Flood Poses Great Security Risk (New York Review Of Books)

A brave marine’s funeral took place yesterday.

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Marine’s Funeral

KABUL, Afghanistan — A top Afghan prosecutor who has complained that the attorney general and others are blocking corruption cases against high-ranking government officials said Saturday that he was fired by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar told the New York Times Saturday that he was fired for refusing to block corruption investigations in “the highest levels” of Karzai’s government. Faqiryar told the Associated Press that he was forced to retire.

Faqiryar, 72, said he wanted to continue doing his work, which has involved pursuing corruption allegations against top officials in the Karzai administration — a task which had put him in the middle of a political fire storm.

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Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar, Anti-Corruption Afghan Prosecutor, Fired By Karzai

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents wearing U.S. Army uniforms launched pre-dawn attacks Saturday on a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan and a nearby camp where seven CIA employees were killed last year in a suicide bombing. NATO said there were no coalition casualties and the attacks were repelled.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s presidential office condemned U.S. media reports that Afghan government officials have received payments from the CIA in return for information.

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Insurgents In U.S. Army Uniforms Attack 2 Bases In Afghanistan

WASHINGTON — The CIA has multiple members of the Afghan government on its payroll in order to help it keep track of various factions within the Afghan government, according to former U.S. officials.

These individuals confirmed to The Associated Press reports that the agency has used payments to cultivate intelligence sources across the Afghan government, a practice that has raised concerns at a time when the U.S. is fighting corruption there.

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CIA Pays Multiple Afghan Government Figures, Former U.S. Officials Say

Several Afghan officials believed to be receiving CIA money. These paid informers are believed to be a key source of information in a government whose leader, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has become increasingly erratic in recent months. Several U.S. officials outside the CIA say the agency’s payments undermine efforts to battle corruption and graft. But the CIA is not the only agency paying Afghan leaders for information—the Iranian, Turkish and Saudi Arabian governments are all believed to be major players in Kabul’s intelligence market. [WashPost]

Pentagon official: Expect more Taliban attacks next month. Insurgents hope to disrupt parliamentary elections planned for September 18, and have put an “extra effort” into destabilizing the north of the country, where the insurgent is believed to be weakest, the official said. Northern Afghanistan has seen several attacks over the past month, including one which killed eight police officers in Kunduz Province this past Thursday. [Reuters]

Iraq’s lessons for Afghanistan. The AP’s Lara Jakes lists seven things U.S. officials in Afghanistan should have learned from their experience in Iraq, including “be careful about Contractors,” “train local troops,” and “treat prisoners like people.” Jakes applauds President Barack Obama and General David Petraeus for remembering to “keep expectations low . . . so that it’s easier to look successful.” [AP]

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Karzai Administration Members Receiving Secret Payments From The CIA

Afghan Sgt. Maj. Barakatullah Kolistani, who trains army recruits, is confident that his fledgling soldiers are learning the discipline, strategic skills and marksmanship needed to defeat the Taliban.

But Kolistani, one of the base’s senior enlisted soldiers, is worried about their proficiency in another key skill: driving. Particularly when it comes to the 8,000-pound-plus U.S.-supplied Humvee, the vehicle of choice in the nascent Afghan army.

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Afghan Troops Learn Rules Of The Road