WASHINGTON — The suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer was a double agent the CIA had recruited to provide intelligence on senior al Qaeda leadership, according to current and former U.S. officials and an Afghan security official.
The officials said the bomber was a Jordanian doctor [...]

KABUL–The Taliban said in a statement Saturday it would provide a “legal guarantee” that they would not intervene in foreign countries if international troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the closest the movement has come to publicly distancing itself from Al Qaeda.
The Taliban have “no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is [...]

KABUL — Some powerful Afghan politicians and tribal leaders have expressed doubts that more U.S. troops can turn the tide of the war, as President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Tuesday.
President Barack Obama has been briefing allies about his plans for Afghanistan. He’s expected to tell the public — and lawmakers [...]

KABUL — The U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government are launching an initiative to persuade Taliban insurgents to lay down their weapons, offering jobs and protection to the militants who choose to abandon their fight.
While President Hamid Karzai’s government has been trying to woo these insurgents for years, the new program marks the first time [...]

By Yochi Dreazen and Anand Gopal
KABUL — The collapse of security in the southeastern Afghan province of Khost is highlighting the difficulties of trying to contain the Taliban.
In 2007 and early 2008, troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division waged a long, bloody and seemingly successful campaign to push Taliban fighters and their allies from [...]

By Anand Gopal and Joe Lauria
KABUL — President Hamid Karzai failed to win a decisive majority in Afghanistan’s election, an official familiar with the ballot counting said, a development that has the two top candidates stepping up power-sharing talks to avoid a protracted runoff.
Results of an audit of suspect votes from the August polls are [...]

KHAS KUNAR, Afghanistan — U.S. and Pakistani troops recently planned a pincer movement to catch insurgents crossing the border from Pakistan into this troubled corner of northeastern Afghanistan. The U.S. would block the narrow mountain passes while the Pakistani army attacked militant positions on the other side of the border.
The operation failed. The reason, according [...]

By Anand Gopal and Yochi Dreazen
KABUL — An American airstrike on militants in northern Afghanistan killed an unknown number of local villagers, dealing a fresh blow to the U.S. campaign and adding fresh political pressure on NATO members struggling to defend an increasingly unpopular war.
The strike on a pair of hijacked fuel trucks in Kunduz [...]

KABUL — The Taliban are attempting to exact revenge on Afghan voters and disrupt the ballot count — part of a campaign to exploit the political uncertainty after last week’s presidential election and try to undermine the results.
Since the Aug. 20 election, Taliban fighters have launched nearly a dozen attacks. They have severed the fingers [...]

KABUL — Reports of fraud and intimidation from election-monitoring groups are mounting, undermining the legitimacy of Afghanistan’s presidential vote and posing a challenge for the U.S. and its Western allies, who initially declared the vote a success.
A linchpin of the international community’s strategy here, Thursday’s election was supposed to shore up the credibility of the [...]