The United States and its allies are working to stop what they regard as an ominous trend: attacks against NATO-led troops by Afghan security forces or others clad in military or police uniforms.
A deadly clash between government forces and Taliban militants erupted in Pakistan's restive tribal belt Tuesday, marking continued unrest in the Orakzai district -- an area government officials last year claimed they had largely pacified.
A man opened fire on U.S. troops killing three soldiers and a suicide bomb attack left four more Americans dead.
A police commander and 13 junior officers in western Afghanistan have joined the Taliban in a move that is new and troubling for the struggling nation as international forces prepare to depart.
A ban on polio vaccinations imposed by the Taliban could affect about 280,000 children living in tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, according to estimates from the World Health Organization.
Militants killed one officer Monday after attacking a police station in Bannu, Pakistan, police officials told CNN.
The execution of Najiba, an Afghan woman in her 20's, shot 13 times in front of a cheering crowed in Parwan province -- and seen widely online in a grainy cell phone video -- is a show of confidence by the Taliban.
With a horrific video showing a woman's execution in Afghanistan, where does that leave U.S. talks with the Taliban?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered the arrest Monday of the Taliban who participated in the public execution of a woman accused of adultery.
A shot rings out, but the burqa-clad woman sitting on the rocky ground does not respond.
Taliban militants attacked a hotel near Kabul on Friday and seized dozens of hostages, sparking a fierce gunbattle with Afghan and NATO troops that left 26 people dead, authorities said.
Afghan police say they've killed insurgents who ambushed a hotel near Kabul. Nick Paton Walsh reports.
A Taliban commander in northwest Pakistan has announced a ban on polio vaccines for children as long as the United States continues its campaign of drone strikes in the region, according to a statement by the Taliban.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reports on the poisoning of 122 girls and 3 teachers at an Afghanistan school.
A hospital in northern Afghanistan admitted 160 schoolgirls Tuesday after they were poisoned, a Takhar province police official said.
Dozens of students are in an Afghanistan hospital after being poisoned in their classes with a type of spray.
In parts of rural Afghanistan a fierce battle is going on between the Taliban and the country's government. And the victims in this battle, it seems, are school children.
The Taliban claimed responsibility Friday for downing a Black Hawk helicopter in southern Afghanistan.
At least 140 Afghan schoolgirls and female teachers were admitted to a local hospital Tuesday after drinking poisoned water, said local health officials, who blamed the act on extremists opposed to women's education.
The Taliban militia said Tuesday the series of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan this week was well-planned and intended to show its enemies, including NATO, that it can strike secure locations.
Authorities in northern Pakistan were looking for 384 inmates who escaped from a prison early Sunday morning after hundreds of Taliban militants raided the facility.
The Taliban claimed responsibility Tuesday for two suicide attacks on government facilities in Afghanistan that killed at least 18 people and wounded 27 others.
Witnesses offer accounts of the massacre in Kandahar; Taliban tells why it suspended peace talks. Sara Sidner reports.
A Taliban commander expressed skepticism that one soldier carried out a massacre last week that left 16 Afghan civilians dead, and anger that the suspect subsequently was flown out of Afghanistan.
In Najabyan village, a visitor's eye is immediately drawn to the turquoise and green sheets blanketing mounds of dirt, and the red, green and gold flag flying above it all.
A suicide bomber targeted an anti-Taliban police chief in Peshawar Thursday, killing him during morning rush hour traffic, a senior police official said.
The Afghan Taliban announced Thursday they have suspended a diplomatic office in Qatar intended for talks with the United States. The group cited what it described as the Americans' "alternating and ever-changing position" for the decision.
The killing of 16 unarmed Afghan civilians is, as President Barack Obama has said, heartbreaking. Families have lost children, mothers and fathers in a rampage that has left Afghanistan reeling.
What motivated an American soldier to allegedly open fire and kill 16 innocent Afghan civilians in cold blood? No one knows at this point. The soldier, an Army staff sergeant, seems to have acted alone, and he turned himself in to authorities after the shooting rampage. What we do know is that he had been injured in an accident while deployed to Iraq in 2010. Despite being diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, he was found fit for duty.
When U.S. forces toppled the Taliban government following the 9/11 attacks, there was a global wave of support from people horrified by the plight of Afghan women. Under the Taliban, women had been denied education, banned from medical treatment by male doctors, and publicly executed for "immorality."
A suicide bomber blew himself up at an entrance to Afghanistan's Bagram Airfield on Monday, an attack the Taliban called revenge for the burning of Qurans by U.S. troops there last month.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for an attack on an Afghan ministry that killed 2 American officers.
The recent smartphone video of Marines urinating on the bodies of slain Taliban should trouble all Americans.
CNN's senior international correspondent Nic Robertson explains that when the Taliban admitted to having talks with U.S. officials, it also showed, for the first time, the group's political strategy and how Taliban leaders might be hoping to get a better deal from the negotiating table than they can hope for from the battlefield.
CNN's Nic Robertson explains the Taliban's refusal to talk with the Afghan govt are efforts to outmaneuver Pres Karzai.
The Taliban have met with U.S. officials to discuss possible peace talks, but do not want to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, a Taliban spokesman said Tuesday.
The Taliban says it's opening an office in Qatar in preparation for peace talks. Nick Paton Walsh reports.
A spokesman for the Taliban denied on Wednesday a weekend report that Taliban representatives may meet with officials representing the government of President Hamid Karzai in Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.
Pakistani security forces killed a key Taliban commander and 20 other suspected militants in northwest Pakistan, two military officials told CNN Wednesday.
The Afghan government hopes to hold talks with Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, according to a senior Afghan official, in a move that threatens to cloud already delicate and fragile steps to negotiate an end to the United States' longest war.
The opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar is contingent on the renunciation of international terror and the backing of a peace process to end the Afghan conflict, an American diplomat said Tuesday.
The Taliban will permit a program of polio vaccination in the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, their spokesman told CNN in an e-mail Tuesday, after consistent pressure over the issue.
The United States could inch closer next week toward peace talks with the Taliban if Afghan President Hamid Karzai blesses the negotiations, senior administration officials said Thursday.
The Taliban is opening an office in Qatar, which may lead to negotiations with the U.S. CNN's Jill Dougherty reports.
A federal court sentenced a Pakistani citizen to more than four years for providing false documentation and attempting to smuggle a person he thought was a Taliban member into the United States.
Authorities found the bodies of 15 Pakistani security personnel in the country's northwest tribal region, officials said Thursday.
Qatar, as diplomats say, likes to "punch above its weight." This arid peninsula in the Persian Gulf is smaller than Connecticut but played a leading role in helping Libyan rebels oust Moammar Gadhafi and has been at the heart of Arab League sanctions against Syria. It's now facilitating talks on the Afghan conflict by allowing the Taliban to open a liaison office in its capital, Doha.
The Afghan Taliban are prepared to open an "office outside the country for talks with foreigners," a purported spokesman for the movement said in a statement released Tuesday.
Pakistani Taliban factions and their allies have set up a council of elders in hopes of coordinating efforts against NATO troops in Afghanistan, a spokesman said Monday.
Afghanistan will accept the presence of a Taliban liaison office in Qatar but under strict ground rules forbidding foreign intervention in peace talks, the government peace council said Tuesday.
The Taliban are claiming responsibility for a suicide car bombing Saturday that struck a military housing area in northwest Pakistan, a spokesman for the group said.
Afghanistan has withdrawn its ambassador to Qatar for consultations after the Gulf state began talking to the Afghan Taliban about setting up a representative office there, a senior Afghan official said Wednesday.
A Marine Corps cameraman gives us a rare glimpse of Marines fighting off at Taliban attack in Afghanistan.
Hashim Khan, an anti-Taliban tribal leader, was killed in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday when a bomb hidden in his car detonated, police said.
A new video emerges that appears to show the Taliban preparing a big attack in June. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reports.
An eighth-grade girl was awarded Pakistan's first National Peace Prize Thursday for her online diary reporting on the Taliban's ban on education for girls.
Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman suggested a total defeat of the Taliban during CNN's Republican debate on national security issues Tuesday night .--- with Huntsman's comments standing in stark contrast to the reality of the continuing attacks by the group in the country.
Aggressive tweeting between NATO and the Taliban leaves many wondering. CNN'S Nick Patton Walsh reports.
After a decade of lethal combat, NATO and the Taliban are now fighting over something else: the last word.
A Taliban-affiliated website has released video that purports to show suicide bombers who targeted Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel in June preparing for the attack in the hills and studying a tiny model of the hotel in detail.
A Taliban-affiliated website published on Sunday what it claimed was a leaked document containing confidential government security plans for a vital meeting of tribal elders in Kabul next week, one that is set to discuss Afghanistan's long-term relationship with the United States and possible peace talks with the insurgency.
Eleven people died after a roadside bomb exploded in the northwestern Afghanistan province of Badghis, officials said Tuesday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the United States would be willing to negotiate with the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban if he met conditions that have been laid out.
A leader of an anti-Taliban militia was killed in a bomb attack in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, a Pakistani police official told CNN.
Amid the 1,200-page military investigation into the August crash in Afghanistan's Wardak province that killed 38 people, including 22 Navy SEALS, are photos of the helicopter.
A road side bomb blast killed an anti-Taliban fighter and wounded three others in Pakistan's Khyber Agency, an official said.
A roadside blast killed nine Afghan National Army soldiers and wounded four in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial official said Sunday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai dismissed calls for negotiations with the Taliban, saying neighboring Pakistan is the key to peace talks with the insurgency, the presidential press service said in a statement Saturday.
Suzanne Malveaux interviews Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai about working towards a peace agreement with the Taliban.
A Taliban attack in southern Afghanistan killed eight officers and completely destroyed a police post, a provincial spokesman said Wednesday.
Afghan lawmaker Abdullah Abdullah discusses the significance of Burhanuddin Rabbani's death.
The assassination of an Afghan leader spearheading the reconciliation process with the Taliban clearly was an insurgent attack, officials say, but at present it's not clear who carried it out.
The Pakistani Taliban declared Friday they will target the weddings and funerals of anyone involved in pro-government activity against them.
A school bus loaded with children came under rocket and small arms fire near Peshawar Tuesday, killing the driver and three children and injuring 16 others, police said.
CNN's Nic Robertson takes a look at how Afghanistan has changed in the ten years since 9/11.
Exactly 10 years ago, a brutal civil war was being fought in Afghanistan as rebels advanced on the Taliban in the capital, Kabul.
As the 10th anniversary of al Qaeda's attack on the United States approaches, Taliban militants struck a coalition base in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing one person and wounding 10 others.
The Taliban have accused the United States of killing tens of thousands of Afghans and brutally torturing others in a defiant statement marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks against the United States.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the abduction of 30 teenage boys who were seized from Pakistan's tribal region during an outing last week.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the release of a group of would-be child suicide attackers ranging between ages 8 and 17.
The death toll in a Pakistani mosque attack has risen to at least 51, a local government official said Saturday, a day after the bombing during prayers.
Afghan authorities on Tuesday raised the number of those killed by a suicide attack at a fuel depot near Kandahar International Airport to four people.
Six militants storm governor's compound in Parwan province after a suicide blast, killing at least 19 people.
At least six militants -- strapped with explosives-laden vests -- stormed a provincial governor's compound in central eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing at least 19 other people, officials said.
The American commandos who died when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan were targeting a Taliban commander directly responsible for attacks on U.S. troops, military officials with knowledge of the operation said Sunday.
The Taliban claims responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed Kandahar's mayor. CNN's David Ariosto reports.
CNN's David Ariosto reports on an investigation into a possible contract scandal in Afghanistan.
The United States on Thursday said it welcomes a U.N. decision to remove sanctions against 14 former Taliban leaders in what is perhaps the latest signal of its willingness to reconcile with militants who break ties with al Qaeda.
Video released by the Taliban shows men believed to be Pakistani police officers fatally shot. CNN's Reza Sayeh reports.
Graphic video footage released Monday by the Taliban shows the execution of at least 16 men believed to be Pakistani police officers -- a new escalation in the fight for control of a pivotal country in the global war over Islamic extremism.
In the latest sign of international efforts to forge a reconciliation process with militants in Afghanistan, the United Nations Security Council has removed sanctions on 14 former Taliban leaders.
The Taliban has killed four members of an international landmine clearing agency working in western Afghanistan, an official with the group said Monday.
Two militants and a passerby were killed in a rare clash between security forces and Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal belt, officials and a witness told CNN Wednesday.
Eight people died when a cargo plane chartered by NATO crashed into the mountains in Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Wednesday.
A day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States is in preliminary talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan to quell the violence, experts say don't expect miracle results.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates talks to CNN's Candy Crowley about "lower-level" talks with the Taliban going on now.
A bomb blast targeting the home of a volunteer anti-Taliban militia member in northwest Pakistan on Monday killed three people, including a child, police told CNN. The apparent target of the attack was not injured.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack Sunday that targeted a NATO convoy in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province, killing at least three people and wounding 11, a spokesman for the provincial governor's office said.
The U.N. Security Council split a key sanctions list on al Qaeda and the Taliban on Friday with an eye toward reconciliation in Afghanistan.
Recently, both The Washington Post and the German magazine Der Spiegel have reported on meetings between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban that have taken place in Germany to discuss some form of peace negotiations.
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