Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Afghan and NATO troops used rockets, planes, and artillery in rolling battles with Taliban insurgents during the weekend in Afghanistan's volatile south, leaving 71 militants and five Afghan soldiers dead, an Afghan official said. It was one of the bloodiest clashes since the US-led invasion in 2001. The fierce fighting began late Saturday and continued into yesterday after the Taliban attacked a police convoy in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province, said Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi, the district government chief.

The NATO summit's plan to "responsibly wind down" the Afghan war is not entirely in the hands of President Barack Obama and his fellow world leaders. The carefully orchestrated exit strategy could come unhinged if the resilient Taliban stage a major comeback or Afghanistan's neighbors interfere with the process to bolster their position in a weak country soon to be without thousands of international combat troops. In short, the Taliban, Pakistan and Iran still get a vote.

TALIBAN: The Unknown Enemy By James Fergusson Da Capo, 432 pp., $27.50 Journalist James Fergusson has spent more than a decade covering the Taliban, from its beginnings in the 1990s as a militant Islamist response to the brutal warlordism then dominating Afghanistan to its 2001 ouster by US-led forces to its present-day battle to topple the US-supported Afghan regime of President Hamid Karzai. Rather than present the Taliban as a caricature of jihadist, misogynistic thugs, Fergusson has worked hard to understand them.

KABUL - A suicide bomber blew himself up at a police checkpoint Saturday in a volatile area of eastern Afghanistan, killing 13 people, police said. The bomber walked up to a checkpoint in Ali Sher district in Khost Province and detonated his explosives-rigged vest, said provincial police chief General Sardar Mohammad Zazia. The policemen were searching motorists' vehicles at the time of the explosion, he said. In a statement, the governor's office in Khost province said 13 people died in the blast - 10 civilians, two Afghan policemen, and one Afghan border police officer.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban have created a sophisticated media network to undermine support for the Afghan government, sending threats by text message and spreading the militia's views through songs available as ring tones, according to a report released yesterday. The International Crisis Group report comes as the Islamist militia that was ousted from power in Afghanistan by the 2001 US-led invasion is making a violent comeback, particularly in the country's south and east.

‘MY LOGISTICIANS are a humorless lot," Alexander the Great is reported to have told his soldiers. "[T]hey know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay. " Logistics makes or breaks military success, from preparing the battlefield to fighting the enemy. People, goods, food, and weapons must move fast and reliably; logistics cannot easily be delegated. Handling logistics for the war in Afghanistan is no easy feat, given the distance, weather, terrain, and constant threat of violence.

Intelligence reports show the guerrilla commander who led the fight against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, Ahmad Shah Masood, died in a weekend explosion, US officials said yesterday amid conflicting comments about the opposition leader's fate. In Sunday's attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up after gaining access to Masood's office in the far north of Afghanistan. Masood's forces control about 5 percent of Afghanistan and are fighting the Taliban north of the capital, Kabul.

KABUL — The spring fighting season in Afghanistan geared up this weekend with a war of words. The Taliban announced they will begin their spring offensive today, pledging to attack military bases, convoys, and Afghan officials, including members of the peace council working to reconcile with top insurgent leaders. Yesterday’s declaration came a day after a new Pentagon report claimed the militants were experiencing low morale after suffering heavy losses on the battlefield.

KARACHI - Some women strode the catwalk in vicious spiked bracelets and body armor. Others had their heads covered, burqa-style, but with shoulders - and tattoos - exposed. Male models wore long, Islamic robes as well as shorts and sequined T-shirts. As surging militant violence grabs headlines around the world, Pakistan’s top designers and models took part in the country’s first-ever fashion week, which ended yesterday. While the mix of couture and ready-to-wear fashions would not have been out of place in Milan or New York, many designers made reference to...

KABUL - A former Taliban leader who became a peace negotiator was assassinated Sunday by three unidentified gunmen in a brazen attack in the Afghan capital, hours before leaders here announced the next phase in the country's security transition. Arsala Rahmani, 70, was gunned down while traveling through central Kabul. He was a key member of the High Peace Council, a group responsible for managing the reconciliation process with the insurgency. As a former Taliban deputy minister, he was considered by many to be an important conduit between active...

They say their M16s are dust-prone antiques. Their boots fall apart after a couple of months, they complain, and many of their helmets are cracked and patched. Yet they set out on patrol. They are the men of the Afghan National Army, the critical part of the huge machine being built to protect Afghanistan's security after the NATO alliance is gone in less than three years. With Afghanistan topping the agenda at a gathering of NATO leaders in Chicago on Sunday and Monday, an Associated Press reporter and photographer traveling with Afghan army forces in Logar and Paktia provinces...

The Taliban on Sunday urged all NATO nations in Afghanistan to follow France's lead and pull their forces from the war. The call came in a three-page statement released just as heads of state opened the NATO summit in Chicago to talk about the future of Afghanistan. The Taliban also on Sunday took responsibility for a suicide bombing in southern Afghanistan. The newly elected president of France has said he will withdraw all French combat troops from Afghanistan by year's end — a full two years before the timeline agreed to by nations in...

KABUL - At least 11 people died Thursday after Taliban insurgents attacked a provincial governor's office but were beaten back by security forces, Afghan officials said. The morning attack was apparently an attempt to assassinate the governor of western Farah Province, Mohammad Akram Khapalwak, who was in his office at the time, and the insurgents once again disguised themselves as Afghan police officers, according to the police security chief for the province, Mohammad Ghaus Malyaar.

The U.S. has declared a Haqqani network communications official and an alleged Taliban money launderer as global terrorists. Thursday's action bans Americans from doing business with the men and blocks any assets they hold in the U.S. The Treasury Department says Bakht Gul relays reports from commanders in Afghanistan to Haqqani network leaders, Taliban and Afghan media. It says Gul also coordinates insurgent movement and weapons transfers. The department says Abdul Baqi Bari laundered millions for the Taliban in the last decade.

COMBAT OUTPOST SANGESAR, Afghanistan — A burst of gunfire snapped First Sergeant Joseph Hissong awake. Then came another, and another, all with the familiar three-round bursts of a US assault rifle — and the unfamiliar sound of its rounds being fired in his direction. The shooters were close. His first thought: "Are Taliban inside the wire?" But it was not the Taliban. Over the next 52 minutes, as his company of paratroopers braved bullets and rocket-propelled grenades in the darkness to retake one of their own guard towers in southern Afghanistan, they found...

KABUL - A former Taliban leader who became a peace negotiator was assassinated Sunday by three unidentified gunmen in a brazen attack in the Afghan capital, hours before leaders here announced the next phase in the country's security transition. Arsala Rahmani, 70, was gunned down while traveling through central Kabul. He was a key member of the High Peace Council, a group responsible for managing the reconciliation process with the insurgency. As a former Taliban deputy minister, he was considered by many to be an important conduit between active militants and the Afghan government.

The leaders of the congressional committees said Sunday they believed that the Taliban had grown stronger since President Barack Obama sent 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010. The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., challenges Obama's own assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the "tide had turned" and that "we broke the Taliban's momentum. " Feinstein and Rogers told CNN's "State of the Union" they aren't so sure.

One of the most powerful men on the Taliban council, Agha Jan Motasim, nearly lost his life in a hail of bullets for advocating a negotiated settlement that would bring a broad-based government to his beleaguered homeland of Afghanistan. In an exclusive and rare interview by a member of the so-called Quetta Shura, Motasim told The Associated Press Sunday that a majority of Taliban wants a peace settlement and that there are only "a few" hard-liners in the movement. "There are two kinds of Taliban.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An assassin armed with a silenced pistol shot dead a top member of the Afghan peace council Sunday at a traffic intersection in the nation's capital, police said. The killing strikes another blow to efforts to negotiate a political resolution to the decade-long war. Arsala Rahmani was a former Taliban official who reconciled with the government and was active in trying to set up formal talks with the insurgents. His assassination follows that of the council's head last year.