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President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy seems to be working.

The change in American strategy from counter terrorism operations, where the goal is to kill terrorists, to the new counter insurgency mission of protecting the Afghan people and restoring the writ of the central government, is starting to pay dividends.

According to press reports, American and Afghani military forces have expulsed the Taliban from an important southern outpost, Marjah, and have hoisted the Afghan national flag once again.

Now starts the tough work of making the national government and its notoriously corrupt police force succeed in maintaining order and opening a space for democratic, civilian administration.

The goal: meaningfully act to improve the conditions of the people.

The AP reports:

The Afghan government took official control of the southern Taliban stronghold of Marjah on Thursday, installing an administrator and raising the national flag while U.S.-led troops worked to root out final pockets of militants.

The ceremony was held in a central market as U.S. Marines and Afghan troops slogged through bomb-laden fields in the north of the town. The Marines and their Afghan partners are trying to secure a 28-square mile (45-square kilometer) area believed to be the last significant pocket of Taliban insurgents in Marjah.

Militants and allied troops are still getting caught up in gunfights in some areas, NATO said.

But the number of residents returning has increased in recent days, shops have opened to sell telephones and computers alongside fresh fruit and vegetables, and officials hailed the installation of Abdul Zahir Aryan as the town's administrator as a key sign of progress.

Some 700 residents gathered to see Aryan formally appointed as the top government official in Marjah, along with government officials and Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines in Marjah, according to officials at the event.

Aryan and a team of advisers held their first meeting in the town Monday and have been staying overnight in a building there since Tuesday, said Marlin Hardinger, the senior U.S. government representative for Helmand province, which contains Marjah.

"Today's event was the civilian Afghan government re-establishing itself officially in front of the local residents," Hardinger said. The Afghan army had previously raised the country's green-and-red flag nearby, but that was only a claim of military control over that neighborhood, he said.

CBS News reports:

The New York Times reports:

...Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense, said that it could take up to a month for the Defense and Interior ministries to remove buried bombs and booby traps and rout pockets of insurgents in Marja. Sporadic fighting and resistance could even last longer, adding to the difficulties of setting up a fully functional local government. Gen. Sher Muhammad Zazai, the Afghan Army’s top commander in the Marja campaign, said the operation’s military goals were “almost achieved,” and promised residents that the Taliban would no longer pose a threat to the area. Marja, a town of about 80,000 near the Pakistani border, had been an enclave for the Taliban for nearly three years.

American military officials have described the battle for Marja part of a larger military campaign to rout the Taliban.

The Helmand governor, Gulab Mangal, said that troops from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force would remain in the area until security was restored, and would not allow Marja to again fall to the Taliban. He promised that reconstruction projects would begin soon, and promised that the Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai would run the city better than the Taliban had.

“What did they do for you people?” Mr. Mangal said at the ceremony, which took place near the site of the new government offices. “Are there any schools, clinics being built by the Taliban? Are they helping you?”

Coalition officials, trying to quickly restore government services, have begun to set up schools and hire employees to fill jobs in the district government.

USA Today reports on American General Stanley McChrystal's warning that while weakened, the Taliban is not yet defeated:

Recent successes in killing or capturing top Taliban leaders have shaken the confidence of the militant organization and raised gnawing doubts in the minds of front-line fighters, the top allied leader in Afghanistan said Thursday.

"You see a weakening of the organization's confidence," U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal told USA TODAY at his headquarters in Kabul.

McChrystal, however, cautioned that it was too early to suggest the recent successes in targeting militant leaders is "decisive" because it hasn't led to a reduction in violence or fighters in Afghanistan.

"We don't see it collapsing," McChrystal said of the Taliban.

In a shocking breach of security, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was punched in the face by a statuette wielding man.

The Prime Minister was in a plaza in Milan greeting supporters, surrounded by his security personnel, when he was sucker punched by the assailant.

The attacker was apprehended and Berlusconi spent the night in a hospital.

Here's the AP story:

 Here's ITN's report from Berlusconi's doctor:

Just days after President Barack Obama announced his new strategy to "finish the job" in Afghanistan, the NATO allies have pledged additional troops for the war effort.

The Afghanistan War is deeply unpopular in Europe - and this additional commitment comes at some political cost for the allies.

Perhaps this is another example of the U.S.' improving international ties?

The New York Times reports:

Responding to American entreaties for more soldiers in Afghanistan, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO secretary general, announced Friday that the alliance had agreed to contribute a further 7,000 “new forces” to the coalition there following Washington’s decision to commit some 30,000 American reinforcements.

At a news conference, Mr. Rasmussen said the injection of a total of 37,000 American and allied forces into the fight against the Taliban next year would have a “powerful effect” and he pledged that Afghanistan would not be allowed to “fall back into the hands” of what he called terrorists and extremists. “That is not going to happen,” he said.

Mr. Rasmussen was speaking after President Obama sent his top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Europe to press sometimes balky NATO allies to contribute thousands of additional troops to his new strategy for turning the tide in the Afghanistan war.

 Here's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on NATO's decision: