Afghans Trying to Coax Taliban in from the Cold
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Afghanistan's defense minister said  Tuesday his government had contacts with the Taliban to try to  persuade them to lay down their arms and return to normal life,  but vowed no let-up in the military campaign against them.
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U.S. defense and foreign policy chiefs face an uphill fight this week trying to get its allies in Canada and Europe to boost NATO forces and coordinate efforts in Afghanistan in the face of rising Taliban attacks.
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Canadian soldiers are among those helping form a cordon around Kabul in advance of Tuesday&#39;s inauguration of President-elect Hamid Karzai.
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Sometime in mid-December, as the winter winds howled across the snow-dusted hills of Pakistan's inhospitable border regions, 40 men representing Taliban groups all across Pakistan's northwest frontier came together to unify under a single banner and to choose a leader.
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A Taliban splinter faction that has threatened to kill three foreign U.N. workers abducted in Afghanistan nearly three weeks ago appeared to narrow its demands for their release Tuesday.
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The U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is helping to persuade Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai's rivals to drop a threat not to recognize the result.
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NATO's top operational commander wants more troops to help crush an expected Taliban offensive in Afghanistan but is facing widespread reluctance among allies to come forward, alliance officials said on Tuesday.
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Negotiations over three kidnapped UN workers in Afghanistan have hit a snag over ransom demands, officials said Tuesday, as Taliban-linked militants said they were
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The U.S. wants more money to beef up Afghan security forces and reconstruction efforts. But it may be too late to thwart the Taliban's expected spring offensive
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Since winter, the Taliban had been promising a spring offensive. It didn't come. Instead, NATO and US forces have pounded the group's positions, and killed its senior leadership.
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Eased-up American military operations could persuade former Taliban militants to return home from countries such as Pakistan, the chief of the U.N. refugee agency said Saturday. Thousands of Taliban supporters fled to Pakistan and Iran &#151; many with their entire families &#151; when U.S. forces and Afghan anti-Taliban militias drove them from power in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden.
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A Taliban splinter faction that has  threatened to kill three foreign U.N. workers abducted in  Afghanistan nearly three weeks ago appeared to narrow its  demands for their release Tuesday.
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SHAHBET, Afghanistan  - Plans for Afghanistan's  first democratic election in October mean little to Ismail Khan  as he strides across a hill top, satellite phone in hand,  flanked by commanders and a battle tank at his back.
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Some senior Taliban members have taken up  an amnesty offer made last year by the Afghan government, the  U.S. ambassador said Monday.
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Taliban militants and common criminals may have infiltrated an Afghan program that trains thousands of men affiliated with local militias to fight the country's growing insurgency.
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SAKYAN, Afghanistan  - Afghan village elder Noor Mohammad stroked his white beard as he listened to a local government chief appeal for help to rebuild the economy of this snow-bound plateau shattered by war and the fight with the Taliban.
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KABUL -- Preying on a weak government and rising public concerns about security, the Taliban is enjoying a military resurgence in Afghanistan and is now staging attacks just outside the capital, according to Western diplomats, private security analysts and aid workers.