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WASHINGTON — Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

"We are looking at two decades of supplying a few billion a year to Afghanistan," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow and military expert at the Brookings Institution, adding: "It's a reasonable guess that for 20 years, we essentially will have to fund half the Afghan budget." He described the price as reasonable, given that it may cost the United States $100 billion this year to continue fighting.

"We are creating a [long-term military aid] situation similar to the ones we have with Israel, Egypt and Jordan," he said.

“Elections here will be imperfect,” Mr. Holbrooke said, according to The Associated Press. “But I am an American who lived through an imperfect election eight years ago. I am not going to hold Afghanistan to standards which even the United States does not achieve.

A few days before the assault, a U.S. helicopter attack mistakenly killed all of the Afghan doctors and nurses from a local clinic, infuriating villagers throughout the area, according to Douglas Cubbison's draft report.

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — “You know what this is for,” Emilbek Kaptagaev recalled being told by the police officers who snatched him off the street. No other words, just blows to the head, then all went black. Mr. Kaptagaev, an opponent of Kyrgyzstan’s president, who is a vital American ally in the war in nearby Afghanistan, was found later in a field with a concussion, broken ribs and a face swollen into a mosaic of bruises.

Pakistan does not have enough troops to deploy to Baluchistan to take on the Taliban without denuding its border with its archenemy, India, the officials said. Dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest, they said.

The indefinite detention of Afghan prisoners also has been a source of anger among Afghan citizens, human rights advocates say. "U.S. detention policy is destroying the trust and confidence that many Afghans had in U.S. forces when they first arrived in the country," said Jonathan Horowitz, a consultant at the Open Society Institute, which seeks to promote democracy around the world. Horowitz is in Afghanistan interviewing the relatives of Bagram detainees, as well as former Bagram prisoners.

While working in the eastern city of Jalalabad last year, I heard many tales that amounted to such porcelain-breaking. The main victims were the communities the PRTs were seeking to help. An Afghan working for an Asian NGO recounted how 15 Humvees entered their compound unannounced and the uniformed "farenjee" (Afghan for "foreigners") began conducting quick medical examinations -- 45 seconds per patient -- while photographing the process to document their outreach. (After complaints from the NGO, the Americans said they spent 105 seconds per patient, not 45.) There was the time that armed, uniformed Americans arrived at an orphanage, I was told, to distribute pencils and notebooks. In the process, the Americans terrified the female employees of the orphanage and the young children. An Afghan doctor from an American NGO told me his concerns about the welfare of communities where the PRTs distribute medicines from their Humvees: The labels are in English or Urdu, he noted, not Pashto, the language spoken in the region.

Last year about 18,000 Afghans applied for asylum in Europe, a figure nearly double the 2007 total. The spike was the highest increase for any major country in 2008, according to the United Nations. By comparison, applications from Iraqis fell 10 percent.

No one seems to know how old Mohammed Jawad was when he was seized by Afghan forces in Kabul six and a half years ago and turned over to American custody. Some reports say he was 14. Some say 16. The Afghan government believes he was 12.