Mullah Mohammed Omar

Pakistani authorities have reacted angrily to a study released this month by the London School of Economics, which concludes that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence has been systematically funding and maintaining top-level ties with the Taliban, and on a larger scale than generally believed. Despite the attention it has garnered, the report affirms what has been common knowledge among academic specialists on Afghanistan and journalists with extensive experience in that country. The ISI, together with the armed forces, has long amounted to a state-within-a state in Pakistan.

In Karachi's Baldia neighborhood, a working-class mix of Pashtun and other Pakistanis, it took an accidental explosion amid piles of suicide vests and grenades to unearth a cell of Taliban militants in a house that neighbors believed sheltered a quiet Pashtun family. "We thought they were fruit sellers," said Mohammed Zahid, 24, who lives across the path from the heavily damaged house. Police said the Jan. 8 blast killed seven Taliban militants who had been planning to attack a Baldia police training center.

In Karachi's Baldia neighborhood, a working-class mix of Pashtun and other Pakistanis, it took an accidental explosion amid piles of suicide vests and grenades to unearth a cell of Taliban militants in a house that neighbors believed sheltered a quiet Pashtun family. "We thought they were fruit sellers," said Mohammed Zahid, 24, who lives across the path from the heavily damaged house. Police said the Jan. 8 blast killed seven Taliban militants who had been planning to attack a Baldia police training center.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Karachi, Pakistan -- A campaign against senior members of the Afghan Taliban has netted a second major figure, the "shadow governor" of a northern province who presided over a dramatic buildup of forces that took over entire districts and harried NATO troops, Afghan and Pakistani officials revealed Thursday. Word of the arrest of Mullah Abdul Salam and a Taliban associate follows disclosure this week of the recent capture, also in Pakistan, of the Afghan Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, whose influence has been described as second only to that of the movement's spiritual leader and supreme commander, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The second-in-command of the Afghan Taliban was captured in Pakistan last week during a raid secretly carried out by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence operatives, officials from the two countries said Monday. The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar deals a serious blow to the Taliban and also represents a potential turning point for the government of Pakistan, which often has seemed reluctant to pursue top members of the militant group that previously ruled Afghanistan and who now take refuge across the border.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The governor of the violent southern province of Kandahar escaped an assassination attempt today, even as President Hamid Karzai renewed his calls to insurgents to lay down their weapons. A remote-controlled roadside bomb exploded beneath a convoy carrying the governor, Turyalai Wesa, as he was on his way to prayers on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the holiest Muslim holiday of the year. Wesa was unharmed, but a policeman helping guard him was injured, the governor's office said.

As President Obama prepares to unveil his long-deliberated war strategy, the Taliban's supreme commander declared Wednesday that U.S.-led forces would find only defeat, dishonor and "a bed of thorns" in Afghanistan. The statement came as the White House announced that Obama will deliver a televised speech about the war Tuesday from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He is expected to announce higher troop levels for Afghanistan and detail a plan for ultimately withdrawing U.S. forces.

The Taliban's reclusive leader said the U.S. and NATO should study Afghanistan's long history in a reminder that foreign forces have had limited military success in the country. The message from Mullah Mohammed Omar comes less than a month before the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Omar said the U.S. and NATO should recall Alexander the Great, whose forces were defeated by Pashtun tribesmen, and Afghan resistance to British troops in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Afghanistan's former Taliban leader is pursuing a determined effort to reclaim power, U.S. officials said Thursday, a bid they plan to thwart by isolating the most militant insurgents, intensifying training of police and military, and reaching out to people at all levels of Afghan society. The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was driven from power by the U.S. invasion in 2001 that also dislodged Al Qaeda from Afghanistan.