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Landlocked Afghanistan has used a regional summit to call on Pakistan to reopen formal border crossings between the two countries, saying barriers on trade, transit and the movement of people defy stated objectives of promoting economic cooperation among participating nations.

Islamabad, which hosted Wednesdays summit of the 10-nation Economic Cooperation Organization, or ECO, sealed all of the border two weeks ago, alleging militants planned and executed recent terrorist attacks across the country from Afghan soil.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Shaif chaired the meeting where the presidents of Iran and Turkey, as well as several Central Asian states, were also in attendance.

Billboards showing presidents of Azerbiajan, Kazakhstan and Turkey on a main highway to welcome them in Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 28, 2017.

Afghanistans ambassador to Pakistan, Hazrat Omer Zakhilwal, who represented his government at the conference, underscored the need for separating economics from politics to promote the ECO mission of regional connectivity for economic prosperity.

Consequences

They [border crossings with Pakistan] have now been closed for about two weeks, causing enormous hardship to ordinary people and damage to traders on both sides. We cannot be for regional connectivity if at the same time we continue to implement barriers to trade, transit and movement of people between us, he said.

FILE - Pakistanis rally at the closed Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Zakhil attended the conference as a special envoy of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Honorable Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the spirit of todays summit, it will be the right message if your excellency instruct the opening of our formal trade and transit routes between our two brotherly countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Zakhilwal

Kabul rejects charges that anti-Pakistan militants are using Afghan soil for staging attacks in the neighboring country.

Mutual accusations

The Afghan government in turn has reiterated its long running allegations that Islamabad harbors sanctuaries and leaders of the Taliban waging a deadly insurgency in Afghanistan, charges Islamabad denies as baseless.

Mutual terrorism allegations have lately prevented the two uneasy neighbors from engaging in official talks to ease tensions.

Pakistan army spokesman, Major-General Asif Ghafoor, on Tuesday called on Afghan authorities to enhance security on their side of the border to prevent terrorist infiltrate into his country, insisting the border closure is not an "indefinite" measure.

FILE - Policemen stand guard at a courthouse after an attack by suicide bombers in Charsadda, Pakistan, Feb. 21, 2017.

"There are some things Afghanistan should be doing before the border reopens that can be decided through shared discussions, so that when the border reopens, no one from our side should be able to go there and no one from their side should be able to come here for terrorism."

Pakistani officials were hoping for the Afghan president to attend Wednesdays ECO summit and billboards displayed at the meeting included Ghani's picture along with other leaders.

But the rise in tensions prompted Ghani to skip the event and so did the Afghan foreign minister, who Pakistani officials say had confirmed his participation days before the summit.

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Landlocked Afghanistan Urges Pakistan to Open Borders - Voice of America

Forbes

The Nation-Building Experiment That Failed: Time For US To Leave Afghanistan Forbes America's longest war continues. The U.S. military has been fighting in Central Asia for more than 15 years. To what end? Perpetuate a corrupt, incompetent, and unpopular central government in Kabul without bolstering America's security. When asked at ...

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The Nation-Building Experiment That Failed: Time For US To Leave Afghanistan - Forbes

An Afghan security official at a checkpoint in Helmand on Tuesday, hours after the fatal attacks on police.

KABUL After 16 years, Afghanistans long war shows no sign of taking a day off, even in midwinter.

On Tuesday, 11 police officers were killed in a Taliban attack in the south, but that was only one in a long and not unusual series of assaults against Afghan security forces.

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In recent weeks, there have been several attacks in which two or three Afghan police officers were killed.

Last year, 10 police officers were killed in one attack, a few days after 17 were killed. On Jan. 31, the Taliban tunneled under an army post in Sangin district and blew up the facility, killing as many as 20 soldiers.

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On the face of it, no single attack was that significant in the context of Afghanistans long and drawn out conflict. But the steady accumulation of attacks is a relentless reminder of what it is to be a country torn by war.

Winter is no longer the total respite from fighting that it once was. Huge numbers of people are affected.

Just during January, 22,000 Afghans were displaced by conflict throughout the country, according to United Nations figures. In all of 2016, that figure was 600,000.

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The killings of the police officers on Tuesday took place in the southern province of Helmand, which has for the last year been the most violent place in Afghanistan.

The Taliban control most of the province, with the government holding on to the provincial capital and crucial strong points, often with the help of heavy US airstrikes.

In the attack, according to Gulai Khan, the police security chief for the province, the Taliban overran a police guard post on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, after a heavy firefight, killing the 11 officers there. They blew up the post and took the victims weapons, he said.

Not far away, on Highway 1, which links Helmand to Kandahar, the second-largest city in Afghanistan, a police convoy on Tuesday struck a hidden roadside bomb that killed one policeman and wounded three others, according to Omar Zwak, the spokesman for the Helmand governor.

Highway 1 is a 1,400-mile-long ring road that circles Afghanistan and connects most of its major cities.

Built by Western donors at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, it is a vital commercial and strategic artery but one that has rarely been free of attacks along large stretches of its route.

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Taliban kill 11 police officers in southern Afghanistan - The Boston Globe

Army Gen. John Nicholson testifies in the Senate on Feb. 9, 2017.(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

The war in Afghanistan is not going well. At best, it's a stalemate. At worst, it's a war seemingly without end the longest in U.S.history that is now shifting slowly in favor of the enemy, the Taliban and other Islamic extremists.

Afghan security forces are fighting harder than ever, but an average of20 police or soldiers are beingkilled each day. The government in Kabul is barely able to gather enough new recruits to make up for the mounting dead and wounded. Last month, amother in Kabul lost three sons, all police officers, to a single attack.Territory is slipping from the government's grasp, withjust 57% of districts nationwide controlled by Kabul, down 15% from November2015.

Americans have sacrificed a lot since the war began in 2001in retaliation forthe 9/11 terror attacks plotted byal-Qaeda leaders, who had safe harborin Taliban-controlledAfghanistan. Beyond the 2,247 U.S. military deaths and 20,000 wounded, the U.S. has spent more in inflation-adjusted dollars to reconstruct Afghanistan than it did to rebuild Europe after World War II, and the nation remainsfar from self-sustaining.

The mainupsideis that the U.S. has successfully preventedAfghanistan from being used as a base for another 9/11-styleattack on American soil. "We believe ... that our operations in Afghanistan directly protect the homeland," Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of the U.S.-led international military force in Afghanistan, told senators this month.Other accomplishments include shrinking territory held by the Islamic State's Afghan affiliate down to a few districts and, in October, killing an al-Qaeda leader who was planning an attack on the United States.

Nicholson concedes the war is a stalemate.He'd like to add perhaps 1,400 U.S. troops to the 8,400 already in Afghanistan,with maybe2,000 morecontributed from NATO and other coalition allies who already have 5,000 on the ground. Theadditional manpower would improve battlefield surveillance and move trained advisers further down into Afghan forces to bolsterleadership.

Enough already for Afghanistan: Opposing view

Nicholson's request for more U.S. troops appearsreasonable, but troop levels have to reflect abroader strategy.America needs to know President Trump'sposition on Afghanistan.More than amonth into his administration, there's silence on the issue. Trump has offered conflicting views in the past, arguing against nation-buildingbut telling Fox News last year, albeit rather reluctantly, that he'd stay in Afghanistan. Trump has ordered his generals to come up with a plan to defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

President Obama was moving toward a complete withdrawal, which might have successfully pressured Kabul into assumingmore responsibilities.But by announcing troops levels well into the future,divorced from the situation onthe ground, he also left the Taliban and other terrorist groups to bidetheir time until the U.S. was gone.

The White House needs toconduct a major policy review of Afghanistan, reach a fundamental decision and then make its case tothe American people. The U.S. troops serving valiantly in Afghanistan deserve clarity of purpose.

The choice is whether the U.S. is staying in Afghanistan with an active counterterrorism role and assisting the government's fight against its enemies orwhether it is leaving. Only when the Taliban realizes that the U.S. commitment is unwavering, and that itcannot retake Kabul, will this longest war come to a resolution.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by itsEditorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view a unique USA TODAY feature.

To read more editorials, go to theOpinion front pageor sign up for thedaily Opinion email newsletter.To respond to this editorial, submit a comment toletters@usatoday.com.

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In Afghanistan, what's the plan?: Our view - USA TODAY

In a week that Netflix is using to unveil trailers for numerous high-profile original films, the streaming giant has released a teaser for War Machine, a wartime comedy whose cast contains an array of notable names, headlined by Brad Pitt. While fans of Tarantinos WWII apocrypha Inglourious Basterds will embrace the idea of Pitt once again playing a tough, gruff, though slightly askew military man, War Machine happens to be a satirical and quasi-biographical work based on a real life general who ran the Afghanistan War for two Presidents.

Indeed, War Machine is a thinly-veiled adaptation of the 2012 non-fiction book The Operators by Michael Hastings in which the journalist recounts his Afghanistan War embedment with the head of Joint Special Operations Command General Stanley McCrystal during early 2010. With the War Machine teaser trailer touching upon the quandaries that plagued U.S. forces during that war, Brad Pitts quasi-McCrystal General Dan McMahon is seen in defiantly sarcastic form as hes handed the baton for the Afghanistan War. While thats pretty much the extent of the brief clip, we can imagine that if the tenure of McMahon is anything like McCrystals, then it will be filled with triumph, tragedy and controversy, along with a few notably public spats with the executive branch.

War Machine also has quite the supporting cast, filled with known names like Tilda Swinton, Ben Kingsley, Scoot McNairy, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, Meg Tilly and Alan Ruck. The film also has up-and-coming young talent, as well. Will Poulter of The Revenant, Were the Millers and The Maze Runner, was also briefly cast as clown Pennywise in the It reboot before a major upheaval. RJ Cyler was co-star of the acclaimed dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and will play Blue Ranger Billy in Marchs Power Rangers reboot film. Lakeith Stanfield, who played a young Snoop Dogg in Straight Outta Compton and appears on FX series Atlanta, will also be seen in the upcoming live-action film adaptation of popular anime Death Note. Emory Cohen, formerly of TVs Smash, was seen in drama Brooklyn and on the recent Netflix sci-fi series The OA.

War Machine is mostly the brainchild of Aussie helmer David Michd, who wrote the script adapting Hastingss book and directed the film. Michds previous features include the 2014 Guy Pearce-starring crime drama The Rover, which he wrote based on a story from actor Joel Edgerton. Relevantly, the duo of Pearce and Edgerton were the featured stars in Michds 2010 directorial breakthrough in drama Animal Kingdom. Star Brad Pitt also serves as a producer on the film.

War Machine gets ready to see Brad Pitt somewhat channel the Nazi-killin memory of Lt. Aldo Raine as a rough-edged general whos been put in charge of one of Americas longest wars when the film debuts on Netflix on May 26.

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War Machine Trailer: Brad Pitt is a Gruff General in the Afghanistan War - Den of Geek US