Taliban

A rogue Afghan policeman drugged and then shot dead 10 of his colleagues in the country's volatile south early on Jan. 26, officials said, the second insider attack on police in just over a week.

The Taliban infiltrator then stole their weapons and fled the police outpost in the Chinarto district of Uruzgan province, authorities said, triggering a manhunt.

At least 30 people have been killed and more than 19 were injured after gunmen attacked Bacha Khan University campus in Charsadda, north-west Pakistan, international newswires reported on Wednesday.

Four suspected attackers were also killed in a shootout with security forces which lasted nearly three hours.

A powerful suicide car bomb struck near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul Jan. 20, with casualties feared from the latest attack in the Afghan capital, the interior ministry said.

At least nine people were killed and 35 injured Jan. 19 in a suicide bomb attack on a market during morning rush hour on the outskirts of Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, officials said.

The bomb exploded alongside a road jammed with traffic in the Wazir Dhand district just outside city limits.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Jan. 18 a small increase in the Australian troop commitment to the NATO-led force supporting the Afghan central government during a surprise visit to Kabul.

At least 13 people were killed when a suicide bomber struck the home of a prominent politician in Jalalabad Jan. 17, officials said, in the second deadly attack in the eastern Afghan city in less than a week.

Pakistan on Jan. 11 opened four-country talks aimed at luring the Afghan Taliban back to the negotiating table with the Kabul government, even as the insurgents wage an unprecedented winter campaign of violence.

A suicide bomber attacked a government office in northwestern Pakistan on Dec. 29, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 70, officials said. 

If the Taliban were not so busy fighting the rival Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadis who began operating in Afghanistan early this year, they might now be within reach of overthrowing the Afghan government that the Western powers left behind when they pulled out most of their troops last year. Even with that distraction, the Taliban are doing pretty well.

Russia is exchanging information with the Taliban and sees shared interest with the insurgents when it comes to counteracting the spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a senior Russian diplomat said on Dec. 23.