KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s reclusive leader said Thursday that his fighters have infiltrated the Afghan police and army and were successfully killing a rising number of U.S.-led coalition forces. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed chief of the Afghan insurgency, emailed his eight-page message to news organizations ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ...

By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL — A U.S. helicopter crashed Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing 11 people on board, including seven American troops, officials said. Three members of the Afghan security forces and an Afghan civilian interpreter for the U.S.-led coalition also lost their lives in the crash of the UH-60 Black Hawk, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement. An A ...

By Stephen M. Walt My colleague Nicholas Burns has a smart column in today's Boston Globe, where he makes the obvious but important point that "the United States should do all it can to avoid war" with Iran. His central theme is that war is not in the U.S. national interest, and that Washington should seize the diplomatic initiative and not allow itself to get buffaloed into a war by Israel. In his words: " ...

By Sudarsan Raghavan DIFFA, Niger This West African desert town hardly seems like the front line of an emerging struggle against terrorism. The market is bustling. Young men listen to French rap music blaring from boomboxes. Boys play soccer on unpaved roads. Yet the nearby border checkpoint with Nigeria, where hundreds of people once crossed back and forth daily, is now closed. Soldiers patrol the streets ...

By Greg Jaffe Thirty-eight soldiers killed themselves in July, the worst month for suicides since the Army began releasing figures in 2009, according to Pentagon officials. If soldiers continue to take their lives at the current rate, the Army will lose about 200 active-duty troops this year, a number that is significantly higher than any year in the past decade. “Suicide is the toughest enemy I have faced ...

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM As a student at the National War College in Washington, the chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces argued in a paper that the American military presence in the Middle East and its “one-sided” support of Israel were fueling hatred toward the United States and miring it in an unwinnable global war with Islamist militants. The paper, written seven years ago by , offers ...

By ANDREW JACOBS NAIROBI, Kenya — China’s investment prowess and construction know-how is widely on display in this long-congested African capital. A $200 million ring road is being built and financed by Beijing. The international airport is undergoing a $208 million expansion supported by the Chinese, whose loans also paid for a working-class housing complex that residents have nicknamed the Great Wall apa ...

By LYDIA POLGREEN MARIKANA, South Africa — The police fired on machete-wielding workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine here on Thursday, leaving a field strewed with bodies and a deepening fault line between the governing African National Congress and a nation that, 18 years after the end of apartheid, is increasingly impatient with deep poverty, rampant unemployment and yawning inequality. ...