Taliban again threaten spring offensive

KABUL (Afghanistan)—The Taliban says it will use new techniques and draw on years of fighting experience to again increase attacks in Afghanistan this spring. A statement attributed to Taliban senior commander Mullah Bradar also warns Afghans working with the government to quit their jobs or risk being targeted.
Bradar said the Taliban is aiming to collapse the government of President Hamid Karzai. He said the militants would continue their attacks until the government is ousted and U.S. and NATO forces withdraw. U.S. and NATO military officials dismiss the idea of a Taliban spring offensive and say the only offensive that will take place this year in Afghanistan is one by Western and Afghan troops.
“It’s the same old story, it’s the same old nonsense,” Mark Laity, the NATO spokesman in Kabul, said Wednesday. “What are they saying they will do? More destruction, more unhappiness, more misery. What is there that will present any hope for the Afghan people?”
Violence has risen during the warmer months of spring and summer the last several years, usually through a spike in roadside and suicide bombs. But the Taliban does not have the number of fighters or the military equipment needed to mount a conventional offensive against the U.S., NATO or Afghan troops.
Still, last year was Afghanistan’s most violent since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 8,000 people were killed, including some 1,500 civilians, according to the U.N. But most of those deaths were of militants killed in U.S. and NATO strikes.
Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry, said the Taliban announcement was nothing but propaganda. “In the past they’ve used all their power against the Afghan National Army, but they failed,” Azimi said. “Thousands of Taliban were killed last year. The ANA has increased its numbers. Important Taliban leaders have been killed.”
The Afghan army, which is being trained and equipped by U.S. and other NATO experts, now stands at 63,000 strong, Azimi said. The international community has agreed to expand the army to 80,000 troops, though Azimi has called for the force of 200,000.
Azimi also said the Taliban is suffering from infighting in its ranks, including disagreements between Taliban leader Mullah Omar and powerful Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud. The director of U.S. national intelligence said in February that the Taliban control about 10 percent of Afghanistan, and a U.N. report this month said 10 percent of the country’s districts are inaccessible to aid workers. Afghanistan’s top intelligence chief has said only eight of Afghanistan’s 364 districts are not under government control.
A car bomb exploded in a market in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Wednesday killing at least eight people and wounding 17, police said. Taliban insurgents have vowed to intensify attacks on Afghan and foreign troops countrywide, launch a wave of suicide bombings and attack supply lines from Pakistan this year in their campaign to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government.
But provincial police chief Hussain Andiwal said no members of the security forces were in the farmers’ market in Girishk district when the bomb went off. “The explosives were inside a car parked in a weekly market where a sizable number of people were buying and selling goods,” Andiwal said. “The target was civilians. There no foreign or Afghan forces in the area.”
Children were also among the victims, he said. A Taliban spokesman denied responsibility for the attack. The Taliban launched about 140 suicide attacks in Afghanistan last year, but routinely deny responsibility for attacks where there are a large number of civilian casualties.
The Taliban spokesman said militants had killed several Afghan policemen with a remote-controlled roadside bomb in the same district earlier in the day.
Helmand police chief Andiwal said two Afghan policemen were killed and two wounded in that attack. Last year saw a record level of violence in Afghanistan that killed nearly 6,000 people, about a third of them civilians.—Agencies