Handout via EPA

Hakimullah Mehsud, right, chief of the Pakistani Taliban, records a video with deputy chief Wali ur-Rehman. The video was given to Reuters on Dec. 28.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — On the heels of weeks of high-profile insurgent attacks in Pakistan, the head of the country's Taliban released a video saying his militia is willing to negotiate with the government but not to disarm.

The release of the 40-minute video to Reuters follows several significant Taliban attacks in the northern city of Peshawar this month. Among them was a sophisticated attack on the airport that began with multiple suicide bombings and spread to ground fighting in a nearby neighborhood; a car bombing that killed 17 people in a marketplace; another bombing that killed nine people, including a senior politician who was among the group's most outspoken critics; the killing of eight polio workers within 48 hours; and the kidnap of 22 paramilitary forces on Thursday.

The attacks underline the Taliban's ability to strike high-profile, well-protected targets even as the amount of territory it controls has shrunk and its leaders have been picked off by U.S. drones. An intelligence source in Pakistan has told NBCNews.com that the Taliban appears to be trying to wrap up the year in a position of power. Another intelligence source said the attacks may be "payback" for Pakistan's easing of relations with the United States.

In the video, Hakimullah Mehsud says, "We believe in dialogue, but it should not be frivolous. Asking us to lay down arms is a joke."

Mehsud sits cradling a rifle next to his deputy, Wali ur-Rehman. Military officials say there has been a split between the two men, but Mehsud said that was propaganda.

"Wali ur-Rehman is sitting with me here and we will be together until death," said Mehsud, pointing at his companion.

Pakistani officials did not immediately respond to calls seeking comment.

The Taliban said in a letter released Thursday that they wanted Pakistan to rewrite its laws and constitution to conform with Islamic law, break its alliance with the United States, and stop interfering in the war in Afghanistan and focus on India instead.

Mehsud referred to the killing of the senior politician in his speech and said the political party, the largely Pashtun Awami National Party, would continue to be a target along with other politicians.

"We are against the democratic system because it is un-Islamic," Mehsud said. "Our war isn't against any party. It is against the non-Islamic system and anyone who supports it."

Pakistan is due to hold elections next spring. The current government, which came to power five years ago, struck an uneasy deal with the Taliban in 2009 that allowed the militia to control Swat valley, less than 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

A few months later, the military launched an operation that pushed the militants back. The U.S. military also intensified its use of drone strikes.

Now the Taliban control far less territory and the frequency and deadliness of their bombings has declined dramatically.

NBCNews.com's Waj Khan and John Newland and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Sher Khan / EPA

Afghan police attend their graduation ceremony in volatile Helmand, Afghanistan, on Wednesday. International troops in the country have suspended their training program for Afghan security forces following a spate of attacks on foreign soldiers by Afghans in uniform.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of Afghan service members have been arrested and expelled after a string of rogue shootings killed dozens of NATO personnel, the country's Ministry of Defense said Wednesday. 

"Hundreds were sacked or detained after showing links with insurgents," ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi told reporters. "In some cases we had evidence against them, in others we were simply suspicious."  

Those arrested were thought to have ties to criminal elements and those expelled were deemed to have irregular paperwork, mental-health problems or false documentation, Azimi told NBC News.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

The move comes during the worst year for such insider, or "green-on-blue", attacks. At least 45 members of the NATO-led force have been killed by Afghans in uniform this year, including 15 in August alone. That compares with 35 killed in such attacks in all of 2011. 

US 'insider' killings mount in Afghanistan

The spike of insider attacks has sparked concerns that Afghan forces will not be capable of taking over security by 2014 as planned. 

Azimi told NBC News that his ministry started an investigation into the killings within the 195,000-strong Afghan army three or four months ago. 

But tensions are still simmering. The shooting dead of three Australian troops by an Afghan army sergeant in the south last week prompted a deadly raid to find the rogue soldier, causing a war of words between Canberra and Kabul.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan said on Sunday they had suspended training new recruits to the Afghan Local Police, a militia separate from the national police, following the spike in insider attacks.

Seventeen villagers beheaded in southern Afghanistan after 'music party'

And on Wednesday, NATO's top official told President Hamid Karzai  that he was deeply concerned about the surge in assaults by Afghan troops on their foreign allies.

Spokeswoman Carmen Romero said Karzai had assured Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a phone conversation that he was doing all he could to stop the attacks. 

U.S. Gen. John R. Allen, who commands NATO's 129,000-strong force, briefed the alliance's top decision-making body on Wednesday about the attacks, The Associated Press reported.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- United States military officials have suspended the training of Afghan Local Police (ALP) in the wake of a deadly series of so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on their international allies.

In a statement late Saturday, Col. Thomas Collins, US Forces Afghanistan spokesperson, said the training has been put on hold in order to carry out intensified vetting procedures on new recruits, and 16,000 existing ALP recruits will be re-vetted.

“While we have full trust and confidence in our Afghan partners, we believe this is a necessary step to validate our vetting process and ensure the quality indicative of Afghan Local Police," he said in the statement.

What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?

Many of the 'insider' incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly, according to the Washington Post which first reported the training suspension.

The newspaper said already-trained recruits would also be re-vetted.

"Current partnered operations have and will continue, even as we temporarily suspend training of about 1,000 new ALP recruits while re-vetting current members," said the statement. “Despite the recent rise in insider attacks, they are relatively rare."

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Hoshang Hashimi / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Forty-five allied troops have been killed in 34 ‘insider’ attacks this year alone. The Afghan army is implicated in 19 of those attacks, but their training will not be halted.

Last week, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two American soldiers on Monday during a dispute in Laghman province in Afghanistan. 

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Aug 19 to express concern over the issue, urging him to work with U.S. commanders to ensure more rigorous vetting of Afghan recruits. Panetta’s intervention followed the 10th death of a U.S. service member at the hands of Afghan recruit in the space of just two weeks.

ALP training is a U.S. mission, carried out by Special Forces. Training of uniformed police and army personnel is done under the banner of the NATO operation.

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A military court in Somalia's autonomous northern region of Somaliland has sentenced 17 civilians to death for attacking a military base, the BBC reports.

According to the report, 30 armed members of a clan attacked soldiers in a camp on Tuesday. Seven people, including three soldiers, were killed in the resulting firefight.

Following the attack, 28 people were arrested and held overnight. A military trial followed, in which three people were acquitted and the trial of three others was postponed.

Five minors were given life sentences, and the remaining 17 civilians were sentenced to death, after reportedly confessing to conducting the attacks.

According to the BBC, the attackers claimed the military had built on land that they had owned for generations. An attack on Somaliland's military carries a mandatory death penalty for adults, the BBC says.

Somaliland, a breakaway, semi-desert territory on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, has been spared by much of the violence plaguing Somalia, but the BBC says land disputes are common.

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Nigerians gather outside the destroyed Church of Christ following a bomb blast in Jos, on Sunday after a suicide bomber killed three people and injured at least 38.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- A series of weekend attacks have left at least eight people dead as Nigeria's security situation continues to deteriorate amid a rising Islamist insurgency, authorities said Monday.

Motorcycle-mounted gunmen killed three police officers at a checkpoint in Nigeria's troubled northeast, Adamawa police spokeswoman Altine Daneil said Monday. She said two officers died on the spot and another died in a hospital after Sunday's attack in a town close to Adamawa's border with Borno State, the spiritual home of a radical sect known as Boko Haram.

Daneil said a fourth officer is in the hospital.

Daneil said it was too early to say the police suspected any specific group, but Boko Haram has carried out similar drive-by shootings in the past.

At least five other people died in weekend attacks across Nigeria.

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for one of those attacks, which hit a major church in central Nigeria Sunday morning and killed three people.

The suicide car bomb attack in Jos killed a woman and a father with his child as the vehicle raced toward the church compound. The blast shattered glass all over the church, injuring at least 38 people who were rushed to hospitals for treatment.

In a statement, President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the attack.

"Those who seek to divide us by fear and terror will not succeed," it read. "The indiscriminate bombing of Christians and Muslims is a threat to all peace-loving Nigerians."

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, has launched increasingly bloody attacks across Nigeria, including ones targeting churches and police.

The group is carrying out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to impose a strict interpretation of Shariah law on the population and avenge Muslim killings in Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

Authorities said Saturday that suspected sect gunmen killed two police officers in separate attacks in Kaduna and Maiduguri, areas previously targeted by the sect.

In Gombe state, an unexploded bomb from a Friday Boko Haram attack that had killed 12 people detonated Saturday morning outside a police building, though it was not immediately clear if anyone was injured.

Also Sunday, police in Bauchi state said they stopped an attack on a church, though they said the seven people arrested were Christians who were embroiled in an internal dispute with the church.

Meanwhile, gunmen attacked two villages in rural Kaduna state late Sunday night, leaving two young people dead and another badly injured, said southern Kaduna community leader Florence Aya.

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KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside mine killed 19 civilians, including children, and injured another five when it exploded in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Wednesday, the provincial government told Reuters.

The strike on the minibus came a day after at least 59 people were killed in sectarian attacks in three cities across the country, and refocused attention on the fragile Afghan security situation.

•  'Grim new precedent': Dozens die as sectarian violence erupts in Kabul

The vehicle was driving on a road in Helmand province's volatile Sangin district — a Taliban stronghold — when it hit the bomb, said Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand government, according to The Associated Press.

After Tuesday's attacks, the largest of which targeted a Shiite Muslim shrine in the capital Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai cancelled a planned visit to Britain to return straight home, wiping out any residual optimism from an international conference about the future of Afghanistan, held on Monday in Germany.

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At least five children were among the dead in the Helmand attack, Ahmadi said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack — a common situation when bombs kill civilians.

On Tuesday, twin bombings on Shiite Muslims celebrating the holiday of Ashoura sparked fears that attacks in Afghanistan might be taking on a sectarian dimension for the first time. Ashoura honors the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 A.D.

A suicide bomber slaughtered dozens of Shiite worshippers and wounded more than 160 others Tuesday outside a Kabul shrine where hundreds had gathered to worship.

One U.S. citizen was also among the dead, according to a statement issued by the American embassy in Kabul. The deceased was not a government employee, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Megan Ellis said, but declined to give further details.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), responsible for security across much of the country, says it is winning the war against the Taliban.

But if Tuesday's bombing sets a precedent for violence between the Sunni Muslim majority and the Shiite minority, it would severely stretch army and police resources.

• Emotional scenes as funerals are held for victims of Afghan sectarian attacks

At a funeral ceremony on Wednesday for victims of the attack, hundreds of Shiite Muslims bore aloft the bodies of the dead, chanting that because they had been killed at a Muslim ceremony, they had died in the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

"We were sacrificed for you," they shouted. "Where is the government, where are the members of parliament? Why they don't join our mourning? It creates a gap between people and the government," said Muhammad, 40 years old, who said one his relatives died in the Kabul blast.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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