Taliban's No. 2 a Fierce, Intelligent Opponent of US

Al-Qaeda bosses living comfortably in Pakistan, says NATO insider

(NEWSER) - “Nobody in al-Qaeda is living in a cave”—instead, Osama bin Laden and other top figures are likely to be living rather comfortably in houses in Pakistan, under the protection of locals and some Pakistani intelligence, a NATO official tells CNN . Bin Laden has likely been roaming from Pakistan’s far northwest to the Kurram Valley near Tora Bora in Afghanistan in recent years. More»

Naive CIA got played: sources

(NEWSER) - In an embarrassing development for the CIA, it looks like the capture last January of Taliban commander Abdul Ghani Baradar was anything but the joint US-Pakistani victory against terrorism it was presented as at the time. In fact, Pakistan captured Baradar to undermine secret peace talks between the Taliban and the Karzai government—and thus to preserve its role as regional power broker, writes Dexter Filkins for the New York Times . More»

Arrest of Abdul Ghani Baradar signals new US-Pakistani cooperation

(AP) - The arrest of the Taliban's top military commander in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Karachi signals a major victory against the insurgents, officials said today. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is the group's No. 2 leader behind Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden. He was captured in the southern Pakistani port city 10 days ago, the AP reports, and he is said to be "talking" to his interrogators. Baradar is the most senior Afghan Taliban leader arrested since the beginning of the Afghan war in 2001. More»

Insurgents his air force facility, bus headed to wedding

(AP) - A suicide bomber killed seven people near a major air force complex in northwest Pakistan today, while an explosion killed 17, including three children, on a bus heading to a wedding elsewhere in the region. The attacks are the latest in a surge of militant strikes this month, coinciding with a major army offensive against insurgents along the Afghan border. More»

(NEWSER) - The American offensive in southern Afghanistan is sparking serious tensions with Pakistan, the New York Times reports. Pakistani officials fear that the surge will push Taliban militants into its border region, triggering a rise in militancy that it will be ill-equipped to tackle without shifting troops from the Indian border. That's a move totally out of the question for officials who view India as Pakistan's main foe and the Taliban as an enemy who authorities can negotiate with. More»