Fierce fighting in recent months has devastated the ranks of the Taliban, prompting the rebels to recruit children and force some families to provide one son to fight with them, a US commander said.
The fighting has fractured the Taliban's command structure, preventing the militants from regrouping, even though there has been an upsurge in violence, Major General Jason Kamiya, the US military operational commander in Afghanistan, said on Saturday.
Despite the setback -- more than 500 rebels have been killed since March -- the militants are likely to step up attacks in the lead-up to crucial Sept. 18 legislative elections, he said.
"The Taliban and al-Qaeda feel that this is their final chance to impede Afghanistan's progress to ... becoming a nation. They will challenge us all the way through Sept. 18," Kamiya said.
Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Mohammed Saher Azimi also predicted an increase in violence in the lead-up to the polls, but said yesterday that the government was boosting the size of the police force and army to counter the threat.
Kamiya said the rebels were desperately trying to recruit new fighters to replace those killed recently, and has even forced families in some areas "to give up one son to fight."
"They have been hit so hard they now have to recruit more fighters. They are recruiting younger and younger fighters: 14, 15 and 16 years old," Kamiya said. "The enemy is having a hard time keeping its recruit rates up."
While the rebels have long been thought to have children in their ranks, there have been few reports of wide-scale child recruiting by the Taliban -- especially of those as young as 14.
Kamiya's comments come two days after the UN said that the majority of an estimated 8,000 child soldiers in Afghanistan -- mostly in the ranks of private militias now allied to the government -- would have been demobilized and enrolled in education programs by the end of this year.
The effort has focused largely on areas outside the country's southern and eastern regions, where the Taliban are strongest.
Afghan officials repeatedly have said that many of the Taliban's fighters come from Islamic boarding schools, or madrassahs, in Pakistan. But Kamiya said the Taliban was now getting most of its fresh recruits from inside the country.
He said part of the reason the rebels have suffered such unprecedented losses recently was that they have been caught gathering in large groups three times since April and pounded by airstrikes and ground forces. Some 170 suspected insurgents were killed in a weeklong battle in June in a mountainous militant hideout.
"There is no [rebel] organizational chain of command ... because we have succeeded thus far in disrupting their means to regroup and conduct a coordinated attack. They can no longer move around with impunity," Kamiya said.
His comments came despite US forces last month suffering their deadliest loss since ousting the Taliban in 2001.
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