I believe that would be a WB-57 as used by NASA, B-57 as used by the USAF and the Canberra as used by the British. Officially, none are in use by the RAF, or any other air force, either.

Could it be an IL-28? But then, none of those are supposed to be in operation in that area of the world either. Curious.

Error and additional infoMichael,
First off that plane isn't a WB-17, as it would be referring to a Flying Fortress of WWII era, rather it is a variant of the English Electric Canberra, the WB-57. Some additional information about it's doing there is that it's part of the USGS 5-year program (that was started in 2004) in natural resources/hazards assessment for Afghanistan and is part of the Afghanistan Reconstruction Program.
http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov/
http://minerals.usgs.gov/performance/2006_accomplishments.html

Oh! Bugger! The old Acme instant stealth paint has washed off again!

It is not a WB-17 and the rear stabilizer is much bigger than most B-57 Canberra. In addition the wing appears to drop slightly and the B-57 had a rise in their wings angle. There was a rare model B-57F that could very well be this aircraft. I don't have a current photo of one but I suspect it is the "F" model. There was only a very small number of the F model built. Less than five as I recall.

If you Google "Afghanistan WB-57" you'll find a number of pictures of this NASA WB-57 operating in Afghanistan. It has been conducting high altitude mapping ops.The NASA logo has been removed from the vertical stab but you can make out the blue stripe on the forward fuselage in Michael's picture above.

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121774

In 1968, NASA had contracted with the Air Force
to operate an RB-57F, which flew many research missions as part of the Earth
Resources Technology Satellite program. In 1972, the Air Force thought the
expense was too high, and transferred the plane to NASA. This aircraft was
re-numbered NASA 925. This plane operated until 1982, when it was retired.
It currently resides in the Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

This link explains all, sort of.

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121774

Bill Cooper is correct about NASA's WB-57F NASA Earth Survey Three, tail Registration N925NA. It's currently residing at Pima, in pieces.

Pg. 178 of the official Pima Air and Space Museum book.

USAF also used two B-57E's for the Compass Site program in 1969. Designed to act as airborne relays for real-time video reconnaissance. Although the system was successful the two aircraft were never deployed to Vietnam. One of those aircraft also resides at Pima after having been dropped from inventory as surplus in 1980.

Pg. 176 (above)

Although both were English Electric products, they were actually assembled in 1956 by Glenn L Martin Aircraft in Baltimore Maryland.

===

India grounded and then retired the last of its recon Canberras in 2005-06. In theory.

FAVORITE
VACATION,
R

As someone said NASA still does operate two of these aircraft out of Ellington Field in Texas NASA 926 and NASA 928 and they claim that they are the only two WB-57s still flying in the world today. You can get some info about their operations at their website
http://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/WB57/index.html

Canberra info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Electric_Canberra#cite_note-Aero-15

However, with that said if you look closer at the picture, you can see that the paint scheme does not entirely match that of the two NASA aircraft and it is missing any trace of the logo and the aircraft and the paint is more of a grey/silver and not closer to the NASA polar white paint, not entirely sure of the sun angle and time of day. You can also see that the landing gear is also down so it was landing somewhere near where the picture was taken which is probably why they were able to get a picture of the aircraft at all, at their typical operational altitude you would need a telescope lens. You can also see a yellow stripe near the front which is similar to some of the USAF marking schemes but that may be a stretch.

I really doubt that that aircraft is one of the NASA craft, but it is somewhat similar to several of the older Air force versions of and it might probably some other departments aircraft or even another country's. They built over 1300 of this aircraft in many different variants, so there are still quite a few in government and private service.

Last year it seemed that there was some type of WB57 flying in Afganistan, as mentioned in this web post. It has some interesting speculation
http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring113007.html

Here is an interesting possibilty to speculate on.... India and Pakistani both used to operate these aircraft in the past, just about all of Afghanistan is within operational range of both of those countries with that type of aircraft. Both India and Pakistani both had reconnaissance versions of this airfcraft, and India only recently "retired" their aircraft in 2007. It could be possible that either countries recently restarted operations with it because of the recent escalation of problems that they are having with each other, and who knows where this pic came from but there have been reports of something that looks like a WB-57/Canberra seen in the region over the last few months..... A little recon never hurtsƒ??.

From recent comments I'd have to guess that the posters aren't bothering to read previous comments.

The aircraft in the picture is definitely one of NASA's WB-57's. It's been photographed on the ground in Afghanistan. See the link below which I posted 3 days ago:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=121774

If I were manning a Stinger, I would have engaged it. Looks like a Frogfoot to me.