KABUL: The Taliban on Saturday announced a new nationwide campaign of attacks in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai prepared for talks with US leaders on his embattled country’s future. The announcement, emailed to AFP, said the operation would begin on May 10 and would target diplomats, members of the Afghan parliament and foreign contractors as well as foreign forces in Afghanistan.
“The Islamic Emirate announces this spring operation by the name of Al-Faath (victory), to be launched against Americans, Nato members and their surrogates,” said the statement, using the official name of the Taliban.
“The Al-Faath Jihadic operations will start in 10th May 2010 this year to include operations against the defeated foreigners and their surrogates all over the country.” Tactics would include bombings, assassinations and kidnappings, the statement said.
It came as Karzai warned that swathes of the country lacked security almost nine years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime. “We have travelled far together, but the international effort in Afghanistan still has miles to go,” Karzai wrote in The Washington Post. “We are not yet delivering security to large portions of the country.”
The Afghan leader travels to Washington on Sunday for talks with US leaders ahead of a major military offensive in the southern province of Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban.
Nato and the United States are deploying thousands of extra soldiers in a strategy designed to bring a swift end to the conflict, with foreign troop numbers expected to peak at 150,000 in August.
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak played down the Taliban threat, calling it a “propaganda campaign”.
“I doubt very seriously that they have the capability to do anything like what they have claimed they will do,” he told journalists.
Source: agencies