ASIA: Taliban dismiss planned US troop increase
21 Dec 2008 6:53 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec 21 AFP - The Taliban has dismissed US plans to send as many as 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, warning the US-led coalition will be defeated as the Russians were in the 1980s.
The defiant statement on Sunday from the hardline militia, who were ousted from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion but have since regrouped to wage a bloody insurgency, came after the top US military officer vowed to send more soldiers.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Saturday that Washington could send up to 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan by next summer - which would nearly double the number of US troops on the ground.
"Every day they (the Americans) change their speech to hide their defeat," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
"They now want to send more troops to Afghanistan ... The Russians also sent that many troops but were badly defeated," he said, referring to the doomed decade-long war waged by the Soviets in Afghanistan.
"When the US increases its troop levels to that of the Russians, they will also be cruelly defeated," warned Ahmadi, the main spokesman for the Taliban who claims to speak on behalf of its fugitive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"More troops - that means there will be more targets for the Taliban," he said.
General David McKiernan, the US commander in Afghanistan, had asked for more than 20,000 extra US soldiers to counter a rise in insurgent violence, seven years after US forces first invaded the country to force the Taliban from power.
Since being ousted from the government, the Taliban - who are said to work with foreign al-Qaeda fighters - have stepped up the number of attacks here against Afghan and foreign soldiers with each passing year.
