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Even by Afghan standards, it was a startling find: An opium packaging workshop, buried under donkey dung and old hay in a stable that U.S. Marines turned into a patrol base in southern Afghanistan.

A member of the Afghan parliament says she escaped injury when her convoy was attacked by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.

When U.S. Marines find suspicious powder that could be made into a bomb, they probe it with sophisticated tests. Afghan soldiers have their own method — they taste it.

Bouwudin courteously greeted the Afghan and American officers who came to meet him, offering tea and eventually a meal as the meeting lingered on. No amount of invitations could get him to walk a few hundred yards to the Marines base.

After a fierce gunfight, U.S. Marines seized a strongly defended compound Friday that appears to have been a Taliban headquarters — complete with photos of fighters posing with their weapons, dozens of Taliban-issued ID cards and graduation diplomas from a training camp in Pakistan.

The Taliban's white flag no longer flies over villages across this militant stronghold. Afghan and NATO troops have replaced it with Afghanistan's official green-and-red banner, which they promise heralds new schools and clinics and good governance.

Some American and Afghan troops say they're fighting the latest offensive in Afghanistan with a handicap — strict rules that routinely force them to hold their fire.