Winning trust is going to be tough!
“Taliban: Afghanistan Will Be ‘Graveyard’ For U.S.,” from CBS News, February 19 :
A former government minister from the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan says the United States can throw as many soldiers into the country as it wants, they will just meet the same fate as all previous “foreign invaders.”
A day after President Obama announced a massive increase in the U.S. troop presence “” an additional 17,000 pairs of boots on the ground, coming soon “” the former minister told CBS News he couldn’t understand, “why the U.S. relies on figures and the number of troops in a country such as Afghanistan, where the number of foreign invaders has never made any difference, and the winners have always been the freedom fighters.” […]
“The more troops that the U.S. and NATO send, the more they will get deeper stuck in Afghanistan,” said the former minister, who spoke to CBS on condition that he not be identified.
He still has ties to the militant group, which was toppled from power by the 2001 U.S. invasion, and he claims the number of armed of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan is set to grow by at least a third this year, to 10,000. He said last year they had 5,000 fighters and another 3,000 Kuwa Zarbati (reserves). The largest concentration of militants, he said, was in the southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
He said the increase was not related to the influx of new U.S. troops, but had already been decided due to a change in tactic; moving the fight from the countryside to do battle in settled areas. “The numbers aren’t significant, what’s important is the new strategy and tactics,” he said.
The former government minister boasted of suicide bombers in waiting. “Bombers are our main assets, and still we have a number of suicide bombers.”
The compassion of Muslims worldwide toward the Taliban’s cause has increased significantly in the wake of “Israel’s Zionist attack in Gaza,” he said, claiming that donors from many nations have been sending cash to buy cars and explosives, which would be used in bombs aimed at the soon-to-arrive American forces….