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Despite bombing, NATO forces say Taliban has failed

Police officers look on as the wreckage of a vehicle used as a suicide car bomb is removed from the detonation site in Kabul, Afghanistan, yesterday. PHOTO: AP

A suicide bomber rammed a car into a convoy of NATO forces close to the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul yesterday, wounding 10 Afghan civilians, a police official said.

A spokesman for the Taliban said the militant Islamic group carried out the attack to "welcome" US Defense Secretary Robert Gates who arrived in Kabul on Monday evening.

Nonetheless, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) yesterday said that Afghanistan's extremist Taliban movement controls no more than five out of 59 districts in the south of the country.

The insurgents are also isolated in the south, ISAF spokesman Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters traveling with Gates.

The Taliban control "not more than five districts" in the south, he said, adding there were 59 districts in the region.

The Islamists were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are today waging a growing insurgency marked by a recent wave of suicide bombings.

But the Portuguese general said: "As an insurgent movement, the Taliban have failed. After six years they only control small pockets. They can't confront the ISAF forces."

Asked about claims that there has been a resurgence of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan as the network has suffered setbacks in Iraq, he said only: "We have increased reports of foreign fighters' presence."

The Senlis Council, an international policy think tank, said in a report released last month that the Islamist militants maintained a permanent presence in more than half of Afghanistan.

The claim was dismissed by officials in Afghanistan, including Branco, who said at the time the rebels were installed only in "very small pockets without territorial continuity."

Gates visited the ISAF headquarters in Kabul yesterday for talks with commanders of forces in the south, which sees the worst of the violence, ahead of a meeting with these countries in Scotland this month.
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