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Taliban leaders have US in sights

American soldiers bow their heads during a memorial service at Bagram airbase north of Kabul, on Thursday. Bagram held a short, sombre ceremony on Wednesday to mark the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, blamed by Washington on the al-Qaeda network of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden. PHOTO: REUTERS

The resurgent Taliban have embarked on a strategy of small guerrilla attacks intended to frustrate and steadily bleed US forces in Afghanistan and to force the US to expend billions of dollars in military costs, according to two Taliban officials interviewed recently.

Hajji Ibrahim, who identified himself as a Taliban commander, said the group's goal was to tie down the US in Afghanistan and force it to spend huge sums responding to limited attacks that draw US forces "here to there, here to there."

He confidently predicted that the US, sapped by a slow, costly and grinding conflict, would abandon Afghanistan after two to three years, and repeatedly compared the current situation with the defeat of Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"How is it possible that America will continue to do these things for many years?" he asked, pointing out that it cost virtually nothing for a single Taliban fighter to plant a land mine.

"Just think -- one plane -- how much is it to take off and land?" he said.

Hajji Latif, who identified himself as a Taliban spokesman, said the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was commanding Taliban forces from his hideout in Afghanistan. While claiming that US troops are overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, Latif called for volunteers around the world to aid the Taliban and said he hoped the US would open new fronts in the campaign against terrorism.

"We are offering prayers that they should start in one or two more places," he said. "When America goes to open one or two more places it will be good for Muslims."

The two men were interviewed separately and on the condition that the country in which they spoke not be identified. They also asked that their real names not be disclosed, and gave only their noms de guerre. Their claims could not be independently confirmed.

Ibrahim said he had been a commander of 2,000 Taliban forces and 200 Pakistani volunteers on the front line just north of Kabul in the fall of 2001. He gave extensive and accurate descriptions of fighting in the area at the time.

Northern Alliance officials contacted this week confirmed that a Taliban commander in that area was called Hajji Ibrahim. Ibrahim described his current position as a military commander, but declined to elaborate.

Latif said he had served as the director of information in the western province of Herat during Taliban rule. He said he was one of four new Taliban spokesman appointed by the group.

Both men gave descriptions of the current Taliban command structure that roughly matched the recent assessments of Western officials in Afghanistan.

Whatever their role in the group, if any, their accounts offered a rare insight into the developing strategies of the resurgent Taliban.

The two men vowed that the Taliban would kill the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and said the group carried out the assassination attempt in Kandahar a year ago that nearly succeeded. One of them said the Taliban reserved the right to kill foreign and Afghan aid workers whom they deem to be spies.

They confirmed reports that the Taliban leadership held a meeting in late June, at which Omar announced a new military strategy. Since then, Taliban attacks on US and Afghan forces have escalated to the point where US soldiers come under fire almost daily.

Four US soldiers died last month alone, after only five were killed in the previous seven months. Among Afghans, 70 were killed in August and 15 in the first 10 days of this month -- a sharp increase from the 18 who died in all of July.

US officials said as many 200 Taliban died recently in Zabul province in fighting that was among the most intense in the country in months.

US military officials say the Taliban remain on the defensive militarily, and that whenever their forces mass, US ground forces and air power are able to quickly kill or disperse them.

"We've disrupted them, interdicted them, denied them sanctuary and killed them," Lieutenant General John Vines, commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, told reporters on Sunday.
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