The Taliban announced the beginning of their spring military offensive
against the U.S.-led coalition Saturday, a day after a new Pentagon report
claimed that the militants' fighting spirit was low after sustaining heavy
losses on the battlefield.
In a two-page statement, the Taliban said that beginning Sunday they would
launch attacks on military bases, convoys and Afghan officials, including
members of the government's peace council, who are working to reconcile with top
insurgent leaders.
"The war in our country will not come to an end unless and until the foreign
invading forces pull out of Afghanistan," said the announcement released by the
leadership council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is what the
Taliban calls itself.
Senior officers with the U.S.-led coalition said on Friday that the Taliban —
aided by the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network — have plans to conduct a brief
series of high-profile attacks, such as suicide bombings, across the country in
a display of power as fighting gears up with the warmer weather. The senior
officers spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss recent intelligence that led
to the assessment.
Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition, said the Taliban
planned to use the spate of violence as a "propaganda ploy" to try to
demonstrate their relevance and create the perception of momentum despite recent
setbacks.
NATO claims the insurgents have suffered a number of setbacks in recent
months, losing weapons caches, being pushed out of their traditional strongholds
and suffering the loss of thousands of insurgent fighters and field
commanders.
In Brussels, a NATO official said international forces had already tightened
security due to the threat. They anticipated increased use of assassinations,
spectacular attacks and claims of infiltration, said the official, who could not
be named in line with standing regulations.
The Pentagon report said the insurgents' momentum had been "broadly arrested"
and their morale had begun to erode. Hundreds of insurgent leaders have been
killed or captured, and since last July, 700 former Taliban have officially
reintegrated into Afghan society and another 2,000 insurgents are in various
stages of the process, the report said.
But recent weeks have seen a number of bold attacks suggesting that the
insurgent group is still well-organized and has friends helping them out from
inside government offices and bases.
Since mid-April, insurgents have launched deadly attacks at the Afghan
Defense Ministry, the police headquarters for Kandahar city in the south and an
Afghan-U.S. base in the east. And earlier this week, the Taliban tunneled into
the Kandahar city jail and spirited out more than 480 inmates, most of them
insurgents.
The Taliban said insurgents will target "foreign invading forces, members of
their spy networks and other spies, high-ranking officials of the Kabul puppet
administration ... and heads of foreign and local companies working for the
enemy and contractors."
The Taliban ordered its fighters to pay "strict attention" to protecting
civilians during the spring offensive. A recent U.N. report said about
three-quarters of the estimated 2,777 civilians killed in Afghanistan last year
died at the hands of insurgents, not international forces.
The Afghan intelligence agency said the government has also been tightening
its security in anticipation of more attacks.
"We have taken significant steps to prevent terrorist attacks from the
enemy," said Latifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the agency. However, he said
that suicide bombers continue to be a threat because they often approach on foot
and can more easily slip past military and government defenses.
Also on Saturday, the coalition released initial findings of an April 27
attack at the Kabul airport in which a veteran Afghan military pilot opened
fire, killing eight U.S. troops and an American civilian contractor who had been
training the nascent Afghan air force.
The shooting was the deadliest attack by a member of the Afghan security
forces, or an insurgent impersonating them, on coalition troops or Afghan
soldiers or policemen. Seven of the eight U.S. airmen killed were commissioned
officers.
The gunman was severely wounded by gunfire and was bleeding heavily when he
left the room where most, but not all, of the trainers were killed, according to
a senior NATO official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the
investigation is not complete. The gunman was found dead in another part of the
building, he said.
The attack occurred at an Afghan facility, the air force headquarters, so the
usual coalition weapons procedures would not have been in place and the trainers
would have had their weapons — with magazines in place — in their possession,
the official said.
The trainers would not have had to load their guns to defend themselves, he
said. All the NATO trainers killed were armed at the time of the attack, he
said.
According to the initial findings, the gunman appeared to be carrying two
handguns.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but the coalition said it
has uncovered no evidence to suggest that the insurgency was behind it.
"At this point in the investigation, it appears that the gunman was acting
alone," the coalition said. "Beyond that, no Taliban connection with the gunman
has been discovered. However, the investigation is still ongoing and we have not
conclusively ruled out that possibility."
Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi declined comment
Saturday, saying the joint investigation by the NATO Training
Mission-Afghanistan and the Afghan government was still under way.
In a statement issued late Friday, the U.S. Defense Department identified
those killed as:
—Lt. Col. Frank D. Bryant Jr., 37, of Knoxville, Tennessee.
—Maj. Philip D. Ambard, 44, of Edmonds, Washington.
—Maj. Jeffrey O. Ausborn, 41, of Gadsden, Alabama.
—Maj. David L. Brodeur, 34, of Auburn, Massachusetts.
—Maj. Raymond G. Estelle II, 40, of New Haven, Connecticut.
—Capt. Nathan J. Nylander, 35, of Hockley, Texas.
—Capt. Charles A. Ransom, 31, of Midlothian, Virginia.
—Master Sgt. Tara R. Brown, 33, of Deltona, Florida.
The civilian contractor was James McLaughlin Jr., 55, of Santa Rosa,
California. McLaughlin was a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft pilot who spent
32 years in the Army before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2007. In recent
years, he trained Afghan helicopter pilots as an employee of L-3 MPRI, a
consulting company based in Alexandria, Virginia.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed two Afghan police officers Saturday in
southern Uruzgan province, said provincial spokesman Ahmad Milad Mudassir.
Further details were not immediately available. AP
