By Bill Roggio, Threat Matrix @ longwarjournal.org, Jan. 20, 2014

The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan killed 31 soldiers and Frontier Corps troops, as well as five civilians, in a pair of attacks in the country over the past two days.

In one of the attacks, which took place today in Rawalpindi, the garrison city where the Army General Headquarters is based, a suicide bomber killed "13 persons including 8 Security Forces personnel, 3 school children and 2 other civilians" in an attack at a bazaar, according to the Inter Services Public Affairs.

Yesterday, the Taliban killed 23 security personnel [....]

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Afghan Taliban reject US call for peace talks
Also by Bill Roggio @ Threat Matrix, Jan. 19, 2014

A top spokesman for the Afghan Taliban rejected the US' call for the group to "put down their arms and begin peace talks," a request that was made just one day after a Taliban suicide assault team killed 21 people, including two Americans, at a restaurant in Kabul.

"We strongly reject the American demand," Zabihullah Mujahid, an official Taliban spokesman, said in an email sent to The Long War Journal. Mujahid's statement was also published on the Taliban's website, Voice of Jihad  [....]

"If America truly wants peace and stability for Afghanistan then it should immediately withdraw all its forces from our land and leave the Afghans to their own wills and aspirations," he continued. "If America is adamant on war and occupation then it should wait for more deadly attacks."

Mujahid was responding to an official statement by the White House that condemned the Jan. 17 suicide assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul that killed 21 people, including the IMF's representative to Afghanistan, three UN workers, two Americans, two Brits, two Canadians, and a Danish citizen [....]