Ali Omar and his son Ali Omar had returned to Kabul for a visit. The father had moved to the U.S. years ago and the son was born there. On Tuesday, they were having dinner by the pool of the Intercontinental Hotel in the Afghan capital where they were staying during their trip. It was a festive evening with several parties of well-to-do Afghans celebrating birthdays and other occasions. Then came the sound of gunfire. "The police ...

Widow Shah Jan sits in an icy room with mud walls in a snowfield on the edge of Kabul. She wipes her tears with the edge of her grimy sweater as she recalls the day in August 1999 when the Taliban set fire to her home in the vineyards of the Shomali Plain and kidnapped her best friend, Nafiza. "The Taliban burst in with their guns and torches," says Shah Jan. "None of us even had time to put on ...

Taliban fighters carried out a series of coordinated attacks across the embattled southern Afghan city of Kandahar Saturday — a campaign that Afghan President Hamid Karzai characterized as "revenge" for the death of Osama bin Laden. Insurgents first assaulted the provincial governor's palace with rocket propelled grenades and small arms fire and then launched a series of strikes across the city on the headquarters of the Afghan National Police and the Transportation Police, on Police Sub-station ...

Osama bin Laden's death is making waves around the world. But among U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan, the country from which the al-Qaeda chief and 9/11 mastermind once declared war on the United States, there was barely a ripple. At a large recreational facility on Kandahar Air Field, about three dozen troops gathered around a pair of big-screen televisions Monday morning to tune into President Barack Obama's announcement. There were no impromptu cheers or chatter to be ...

In early December, U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry attended a shura in the Zhari district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province for the first time. "I've been to all 34 of Afghanistan's provinces, but I've never been here before, because the Taliban prevented it," he told the local elders. "A year ago, I would never have believed we could have this meeting, so I congratulate you on your courage." Zhari district is in the heart of the Taliban homeland, an area ...

— Taliban militants dug a more than 1,050-foot tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and insurgents said Monday. The massive overnight jailbreak in Afghanistan's second-largest city serves as a reminder of the Afghan government's continuing weakness in the south, despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. Kandahar city, in particular, has been a focus of the ...

Afghanistan has been something of a forgotten war in recent months because of the world's preoccupation with Libya and Egypt and the wave of antigovernment protests spreading throughout the Middle East. That will soon change, now that the Obama Administration is stepping up talks with the Taliban in an effort to come up with some peaceable endgame to the half-trillion-dollar war. Part of the plan is to involve nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the talks ...

The name Taliban means "seekers of knowledge." Since they seized control of most of Afghanistan in 1996, the clique of fundamentalist zealots who go by that name have eliminated virtually all human rights within their reach. Their proscriptions run from the hideous to the farcically pious--though farce itself, in today's Afghanistan, can and does kill. At one extreme, most girls are denied any education: Afghanistan is the most misogynistic country in the world. At another, a man who trims his ...

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her ...

C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks Within Pakistan The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan  in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan. As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft  thus far in September, the most ...