KABUL (Reuters) – A barrage of 40 rockets was fired into eastern Afghanistan from Pakistan on Friday, a senior official said, as the top border police commander for the region offered his resignation over the government’s response to weeks of attacks.

General Aminullah Amarkhil, head of the border police in the eastern region, said he was not able to return fire and could not stand by as people were killed by the shells.

“I have submitted my resignation to the Interior Ministry because I can’t see my people being killed by shells fired from Pakistan,” Amarkhil told Reuters.

“I have promised my people here that the shelling would be stopped, but people are still dying because we have no order from the central government to respond,” he added.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry said in late June that four children were killed in eastern Kunar province by Pakistani artillery shells, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that Pakistan had fired 470 rockets over the border that month.

Pakistan last Monday rejected the Afghan allegations of large scale cross-border shelling, saying only that “a few accidental rounds” may have crossed the border when it pursued militants who had attacked its security forces.

Amarkhil’s spokesman said the resignation had not been accepted, but Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said the ministry had not received a resignation letter.

SPERWAN GHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Sniffing out bombs that kill and maim hundreds of Western soldiers in Afghanistan each year is a game for Eggy, rewarded with a lightly boiled chicken breast.

“It’s as simple as that, she just wants to go out and have fun,” said Sinisa “Bullet” Erkman, a Croatian who works as the handler for the five-year-old German shepherd.

But her games helped save lives, and when the Canadian forces she works with head home next month, their U.S. replacements hope to recruit even more canine help.

“There should be more (dogs) than the Canadians have; their arrival is just a matter of space,” said Captain Sean Allred, who is taking command of Forward Operating Base Sperwan Ghar, currently crammed with both U.S. and Canadian troops.

Eggy and the other sniffer dogs she works with are mascot, protection, and a reminder of home all rolled into one for the troops they serve.

“This is my second tour and it made a big difference having the dogs, rather than having to send a guy to poke a suspected IED (improvised explosive device),” said Corporal Louis Larivierre, using the military’s standard name for the bombs.

On the smaller combat outposts, where soldiers are more isolated and there is only one dog, Eggy was so spoiled that Erkman sometimes had to ask the soldiers to ignore her for a couple of days, to remind her who is in control.

FOB SPERWAN GHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) – In the dusty heart of the Panjwai valley, there are waffles and real maple syrup for breakfast, salmon and tagliatelle for dinner, and lychees, ice-cream and home-made cookies for desert.

The lucky diners are not VIP visitors but Canadian soldiers, who between meals head out to fight the Taliban in the poppy fields and narrow mud lanes of one of the most dangerous corners of southern Afghanistan.

“Napoleon said ‘An army marches on its stomach’. We haven’t forgotten that,” said Lieutenant Colonel Marcel McNicholl, Canada’s senior gunner in Afghanistan.

The Canadians are preparing to withdraw their combat troops after nearly a decade fighting in Afghanistan, and with them will go a network of combat kitchens that even other armies admit serve up some of the best food of the war.

“We aren’t going to eat as well when they’ve gone,” said one of the U.S. soldiers replacing the Canadian troops at Forward Operating Base Sperwan Ghar, who asked not to be named for betraying such unpatriotic sentiments.

U.S. bases often provide only ration packs at lunch.

A dedication to keeping the army well fed in even the most inhospitable outposts has been bolstered by the French-Canadian culinary heritage of the unit currently serving in Sperwan Ghar, on the edge of the Reg desert.

PANJWAI DISTRICT, Afghanistan (Reuters) U.S. Lieutenant Jonathan Austin’s men spent Wednesday as they expect to spend the best part of a year — patrolling grape orchards in the blazing desert sun, scrambling over mud walls and scanning the paths of Chariagen village for homemade bombs.

Word had not filtered down to their outpost in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province that U.S. President Barack Obama had chosen that evening to announce his plans for starting to bring home U.S. troops.

Obama will announce in a televised address his plan to begin pulling some of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in July, a first step toward ending a long, costly war.

But for the men charged with the tough daily grind of fighting on the frontline of the near decade-long war in Afghanistan, the big decision will have little impact.

“It won’t change our job any,” Austin said with a shrug, after he was told about the speech, which will not be broadcast live in Sperwan Ghar and anyway occurs around 4.00 a.m. local time when the only soldiers awake would be on duty.

“We’ve still got a year of fighting here.”

Analysts expect the soldiers who make up most of the initial drawdown will be engineers and logistics corps who supported the 30,000-strong surge Obama ordered in 2009, with most combat troops left to fight.

KABUL (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Kabul has issued a thinly veiled warning to Afghan President Hamid Karzai that harsh criticisms of the West could jeopardize the troops and funding critical to the Afghan government’s survival.

Ambassador Karl Eikenberry said he found comments from “some” Afghan leaders “hurtful and inappropriate,” according to a transcript of a speech released late on Sunday.

Although he did not mention Karzai by name, the speech appeared to be a direct response to a string of verbal broadsides against Western troops serving in Afghanistan and the diplomatic and aid programs that accompany them.

In one recent fiery speech Karzai warned that foreign soldiers risked being seen as occupiers because of civilian casualties they caused. Last week he said the West was polluting the country with weapons containing toxic chemicals.

Eikenberry said those comments left him ashamed and speechless in front of the relatives of U.S. war dead.

“When I hear some of your leaders call us occupiers, I cannot look at these mourning parents, spouses, and children in the eye and give them a comforting reply,” Eikenberry told an audience of students and academics at Herat University in western Afghanistan.

“When we hear ourselves being called occupiers and worse, our pride is offended and we begin to lose our inspiration to carry on,” he added, in a personal addendum to a speech on education and transition.

KABUL (Reuters) – The United States is in contact with the Taliban about a possible settlement to the war in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday, the first official confirmation of U.S. involvement in negotiations.

U.S. officials would neither confirm nor deny Karzai’s assertion on American contacts with the Taliban, which was ousted from power in a 2001 U.S. invasion for hosting al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

Karzai said an Afghan push toward peace talks, after nearly a decade of war, had not yet reached a stage where the government and insurgents were meeting, but their representatives had been in touch.

“Peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations,” Karzai said in a speech in Kabul.

“The peace negotiations between (the) Afghan government and the Taliban movement are not yet based on a certain agenda or physical (meetings), there are contacts established.”

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden would not confirm any contacts with the Taliban, but said the United States supported reconciliation in Afghanistan.

“I can’t confirm any specific interactions, but we continue to support an Afghan-led reconciliation and reintegration process that would bring insurgents in from the cold,” Hayden said.

KABUL (Reuters) – Iran’s defense minister made a landmark visit to Afghanistan on Saturday to bolster ties as Kabul prepares to assume security control from NATO-led forces and Washington seeks to wind down its almost decade-old tenure.

Majority Shi’ite Iran and majority Sunni Afghanistan share a long border and history, and Western powers have alleged that Tehran’s involvement included supporting the Taliban insurgency to compete with U.S. influence. Iran denies that charge.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers Afghanistan’s security as its own security, has put a lot of effort toward stability in Afghanistan and will continue to help in this regard,” Iranian state broadcaster IRIB quoted Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying.

Vahidi’s visit, during which he met Afghan counterpart Abdul Rahim Wardak, was the first by an Iranian defense minister in 92 years, according to IRIB.

“On this trip I hope to witness the expansion of defense ties between the two countries,” Vahidi said.

Wardak’s ministry said the two discussed challenges such as terrorism, drugs and arms smuggling, crime and border security.

“Both Islamic countries emphasized that according to their common faith, culture, language, historical and social values, they will respect each other’s independence, territorial integrity and national sovereignty,” it said in a statement.