By Patrick Markey BOGOTA, March 5 (Reuters) - Lessons from Colombia's U.S.-backed war against insurgents and drug traffickers could be applied to Washington's expanding military campaign in Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Bogota the Andean country's ideas on counterinsurgency, building governance in areas once abandoned by the state and economic development were fundamental. "There are parts of it that would be very applicable to other parts of the world, especially Afghanistan," he said. President Barack Obama's administration is currently reviewing U.S. policy for Afghanistan as Washington prepares to send in a further 17,000 troops to try to turn around an increasingly violent conflict. Once a powerful rebel force of 17,000 fighters that controlled large areas, Colombia's FARC insurgency movement has been driven back into the jungles and mountains. Bombings and kidnappings have dropped sharply under President Alvaro Uribe. Better troop training, more mobility with helicopters and improved intelligence have helped the army cut off rebel communications and supplies and isolated units from leadership. Washington has supplied more than $5 billion to Colombia to help combat guerrillas and the cocaine trade fueling the conflict but critics question the success of the anti-narcotics program. The U.N. estimates 27 percent more land was used for coca production at the end of 2007 than a year before. U.S. officials have said the Plan Colombia aid package could be an "overarching" model for Pakistan and Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation for opium is helping finance a determined Taliban militant insurgency. Afghan police have already trained with their Colombian counterparts and Bogota is studying sending troops to Afghanistan to help out in eradication and de-mining. Colombia, which supplies about 600 tonnes of cocaine a year, once relied almost entirely on fumigation to destroy coca, but has stepped up manual eradication which is considered to have a more lasting impact. Colombia and U.S. authorities now hope a pilot program that better combines tough security with immediate economic development and alternatives for coca farmers can be used to keep violence in check and attack drug output. Despite a drop in production last year, Afghanistan still supplies more than 90 percent of the world's opium, a raw ingredient of heroin. The drug trade injects $3 billion a year in the Afghan economy and helps fund the Taliban. (Editing by David Storey)
A man lifts up fabric from the gravesite of revered poet Abdul Rehman, to show the damage it received to on-lookers, after an explosion to its mausoleum walls in the outskirts ...
