Taliban

Once military victory is complete in Afghanistan, should the United States expand the war on terrorism against other nations? If yes, who's next and why? If no, why not? Send essays of about 200 words by Dec. 17, including a phone number for verification, to Voices/Taliban, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Send faxes to 215-854-4483 and e-mail to inquirer.letters@phillynews.com. Questions? Call Kevin Ferris, readers' editor, at 215-854-4543.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide attacker with a bomb in his turban posed as a Taliban peace envoy and assassinated a former Afghan president who for the past year headed a government council seeking a political settlement with the insurgents. Yesterday's attack, carried out in former President Burhanuddin Rabbani's Kabul home, dealt a harsh blow to attempts at ending a decade of war. The killing of Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik and one of the wise old men of Afghan politics, will blunt efforts to keep in check the regional and ethnic rivalries that help feed the insurgency.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF. Herat. Kabul. Jalalabad. Kandahar. Faster than you can say "quagmire," the Taliban is fleeing cities across Afghanistan. A week ago, critics of the U.S.-led military campaign were insisting that the Taliban wouldn't budge, that American bombs were only killing civilians, that Ramadan and winter would lock in place the Taliban's advantage on the ground, and that the coalition supporting the war was disintegrating. Now the Taliban is disintegrating. Why? Because the crisis of confidence Osama bin Laden sought to foment in the West has taken hold in Afghanistan instead.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that if security concerns make it impossible to set up a Taliban political office in Afghanistan, then it should be established in another Islamic country, like Saudi Arabia, or in Turkey. If the Taliban opened an office, it would be seen as a willingness to talk peace and signal their intention to try to find a nonviolent solution to an insurgency that has cost the lives of thousands. Karzai's comments came one day after an Indian newspaper reported that plans were being finalized for a Taliban office in the Gulf state of Qatar.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Police fired warning shots to disperse hundreds of stone-hurling Afghans yesterday to protest Quran burning in the U.S. At least 35 police officers and 10 protesters were reportedly wounded; two of them had gunshot wounds. Though a small American church in Florida backed off its threat to destroy the holy book to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, several copycat burnings were posted on the Internet. Up to 800 protesters gathered on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, chanting "Death to America" and listening to fiery speeches.

AB BAND, Afghanistan - Fed up with the Taliban closing their schools and committing other acts of oppression, men in a village about 100 miles south of Kabul took up arms late last spring and chased out the insurgents with no help from the Afghan government or U.S. military. Small-scale revolts in recent months like the one in Kunsaf, mostly along a stretch of desert south of the Afghan capital, indicate bits of a grassroots, do-it-yourself anti-insurgency that the United States hopes Afghan authorities can transform into a wider movement.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The massive Taliban truck bomb that exploded outside an American military base in a restive eastern district injured nearly 80 U.S. troops and killed five Afghans, Western and Afghan officials said yesterday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place Saturday evening in the Sayedabad district of Wardak province. That is the same district where insurgents last month shot down a U.S. Chinook helicopter, killing 30 American troops, the majority of them Navy SEALs, including some from the unit responsible for killing Osama bin Laden.

KARACHI, Pakistan - Bodies are piling up in Pakistan's largest city as it suffers one of its most violent years in history, and concern is growing that the chaos is giving greater cover for the Taliban to operate and undermining the country's economic epicenter. Karachi, a sprawling port city on the Arabian Sea, has long been beset by religious, sectarian, and ethnic strife. Here armed wings of political parties battle for control of the city, Sunnis and Shiites die in tit-for-tat sectarian killings, and Taliban gunmen attack banks and kill police officers.

KABUL, Afghanistan - On the first day of its promised spring offensive, the Taliban used a 12-year-old boy as a suicide bomber in an attack yesterday that killed four civilians, President Hamid Karzai said. It was one of several attacks across the country that killed seven people, government officials said. The insurgent movement announced in a statement Saturday that it would step up operations against military bases, convoys and Afghan officials, including members of the peace council working to reconcile with top insurgent leaders.

TALIBANTER: She doesn't look at the world through veils. She isn't forced to stay inside her Bergen County, N.J., home. And she can say anything she wants. Maybe Laili Helms looks through rose-colored glasses. For sure, she is talking out of the other side of her mouth these days. Helms, an Afghan native who speaks three languages, coaches her sons' soccer team and is a niece-in-law of former CIA director Richard Helms, has long been a vocal supporter and adviser of the Taliban.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Nawaz Sharif, who twice served as Pakistan's prime minister in the 1990s, has decisively garnered enough seats in Parliament to give him an unprecedented third term in the post, analysts said Sunday, as election results continued to pile up in favor of the industrialist's center-right party. "He will not have any problem in forming the new government; that is very clear," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political expert in Lahore, long the stronghold of Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

KARACHI, Pakistan - Two blasts in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi killed three people near the office of a political party critical of the Taliban, a police officer said, heightening tensions ahead of the country's historic election next Saturday. Police officer Aamir Farooqi said the explosions late Saturday wounded 22 people. A spokesman for the Taliban, Ahsanullah Ahsan, claimed responsibility. Pakistan has been experiencing a wave of violence connected to the elections, mostly at the hands of Taliban extremists targeting various political parties and their candidates.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgents ambushed an Afghan government peace negotiator Wednesday, killing him and two bodyguards as they headed to a meeting in the south to discuss plans for local troops to take over responsibility from the U.S-led coalition, Afghan officials said. Malim Shah Wali Khan, 53, who sat on a council tasked with starting talks with the Taliban in hopes of ending the nearly 12-year-old war, died when attackers hit his convoy with a bomb and gunfire, Helmand provincial spokesman Omer Zawak said.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A civilian cargo aircraft crashed at Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital, soon after takeoff Monday, killing all seven people aboard, the U.S.-led military coalition said. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the crash, but the coalition said in a statement to the Associated Press: "Taliban's claims are false. " It said the cause was being investigated by emergency crews that rushed to the site, but there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time.

MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistani Taliban fighters attacked two leaders of an anti-militant political party on Sunday in northwest Pakistan, killing one and wounding another in the latest targeting of members of secular-leaning parties ahead of next month's parliamentary election. In the first incident, Mukarram Shah was killed in an explosion as he entered his car in the village of Banjot, said Abdullah Khan, police chief of the nearby city of Mingora. The explosives appeared to have been set off by remote control, he added.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A fierce battle between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan left nearly 20 people dead, including 11 Afghan children killed in an air strike and an American civilian adviser, officials said Sunday. The fighting along a main infiltration route from Pakistan on Saturday was indicative of a surge in hostilities as Afghanistan's spring fighting season gets under way. This year's will be closely watched because Afghan forces are having to contend with less support from the international military coalition, making it a test case of their ability to take on the insurgency.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Insurgents wearing Afghan army uniforms launched a suicide attack and stormed a courthouse Wednesday in a failed bid to free Taliban inmates, killing at least 44 people, half of them shot in the basement. All nine attackers were killed. The attack - one of the deadliest in the more than 11-year-old war - began about 8:30 a.m. when nine men wearing suicide vests drove into the capital of Farah province in western Afghanistan, evading checkpoints by using army vehicles, according to the provincial police chief.

DOHA, Qatar - Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with the emir of Qatar in Doha on Sunday to discuss the possible opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. The move could foster peace negotiations with the Islamic fundamentalist movement in a bid to stem violence as foreign combat forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The Qatar News Agency said Karzai met with the emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and other senior government officials. He also held talks with Qatar's ambassador to Pakistan during a tour of an Islamic art museum in Doha.

THERE ARE many ways to become a published author, but the toughest way Tattle knows of is to get shot. So congrats to Malala Yousafzai , the Pakistani teenager who took a bullet from the Taliban last October as she returned home from school. Little, Brown and Co. will publish the 15-year-old's memoir in the United States and much of the rest of the world. Publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson announced it would release I Am Malala , about the traumatic event and Malala's long-running campaign to promote children's education, in Britain and Commonwealth countries this fall.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Pakistani Taliban on Monday withdrew its offer of holding peace talks with the government, saying that the authorities were not serious about following through with negotiations. The Taliban statement came as a pair of suicide bombers attacked a court complex in Peshawar. The Taliban claimed responsibility. One of the attackers was shot to death, but the other detonated his explosives in a packed courtroom, killing four people and wounding more than 40. The Taliban has been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for more than five years, killing thousands.