bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Taleban just won�t go
away
SHAHIKOT, Afghanistan, April 7 (SANA): There
was too much defeatism in the tea house for young Atiqullah�s taste. He
was sure the Taleban would be back.�Afghanistan�s military and political situation is tumultuous, as unpredictable as spring weather. It is sunny and cool for part of the day and suddenly you see the cloud burst and it rains,� Atiqullah said, hoping that the Taleban would prevail eventually, with Allah�s help.
His older companion said the reality on the ground was different. �The Taleban are not the threat they were a year ago and Americans seem to have succeeded in taking our country,� he said.
Three years after US forces routed hundreds of Taleban and al Qaeda fighters in the battle of Shahi Kot, in the mountains of southern Paktia province, villagers reluctantly admit the US and the Afghan government forces have almost won the war, Khaleej Times report said on Thursday.
But an anticipated spring offensive in the last few weeks showed the Taleban were still in business after a long winter lull that followed their failure to disrupt Afghanistan�s presidential poll last October.
�The Taleban are neither weakened nor will any one of them surrender arms to the infidels. The reports of surrenders are just propaganda by the occupying infidel forces,� Mullah Dadullah, one of the most-wanted Taleban commanders, told Reuters by satellite telephone.
�The jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan will continue until the infidels are ousted.�
US forces had suffered their worst one-day losses in combat for some time a day earlier when four soldiers were killed by a land mine in Logar province just south of Kabul.
Bombs in the southern city of Kandahar and eastern city of Jalalabad also announced the Taleban�s defiance during recent visits by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US first lady Laura Bush.
And on April 2, a raiding party seized the district headquarters in Deshu, a remote village on the banks of the River Helmand, in the southwest province of that name. Dozens of armed men rode into town aboard four-wheel-drives and pick-up trucks in a pre-dawn assault.
It was for this reason that Atiq, a Pashtun villager living a few kilometres outside the town of Sharan, in Paktika, gave up fighting.
The Taleban group he ran with had used villages around Miranshah as safe havens from which they harried US and Afghan forces in Khost and Paktika provinces. Atiq still sees some old comrades carrying on the fight, albeit without their trademark black turbans and beards.
�We have seen them driving round on motorbikes, clean shaven, even sometimes wearing military uniforms and setting up road check points,� he said.
But in Sharan, US soldiers confidently stride through the main street of the dusty town, where shipping containers act as shops selling groceries, bread, toiletries and music tapes. �There�s not been an attack in the past seven to eight months,� shopkeeper Zafar Khan said, as a foot patrol of five to six US soldiers sauntered past.
It�s a similar story in the village of Arzo, in neighbouring Ghazni province Taleban sympathies run deep among the largely Pashtun populace.
�The Americans don�t seem as scared of attacks, like the ones they faced here six months ago,� says Sayed Nikbin, with regret etched on his bearded, pock-marked face.
�They used to travel in convoys consisting of at least six vehicles, sometimes under protection of air support before the election,� said Nikbin. But he�s not happy. Like many ultra-conservative rural Pashtuns, Nikbin has an abiding hatred of foreign troops in his land.
http://www.kashar.net/compleat.asp?id=1964
===
-muslim voice-
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