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In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district. “There was no other way; we knew people wanted us to get rid of all these deadly I.E.D.’s,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices, the military’s term for homemade bombs.

"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."

The Iranian payments are not large, at least compared with the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States has spent to oust the Taliban from power, support Mr. Karzai’s government and fight a tenacious insurgency intent on toppling Mr. Karzai.

Clinton's visit highlighted the tricky task of balancing democracy and security interests. Former Republican officials have accused the Obama administration of soft-pedaling democracy concerns in an effort to make progress on other issues with countries such as Russia and China.

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military released a scathing report Saturday on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians earlier this year, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by a team of Predator drone operators helped lead to an inadvertent missile strike on a group of innocent men, women and children.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Farmers from the district of Marja, which since February has been the focus of the largest American-led military operation in Afghanistan, are fleeing the area, saying that the Taliban are terrorizing the population and that American troops cannot protect the civilians.

MOSCOW — The president of Kyrgyzstan was forced to flee the capital, Bishkek, on Wednesday after bloody protests erupted across the country over his repressive rule, a backlash that could pose a threat to the American military supply line into nearby Afghanistan.

And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

Mr. Karzai said that, left alone, he could strike a deal with the Taliban, but that the United States refuses to allow him. The American goal, he said, was to keep the Afghan conflict going, and thereby allow American troops to stay in the country.