Afghanistan's Taliban fighters will step up attacks against government and foreign troops when spring arrives next month, a Taliban commander said today.
"Taliban attacks will further increase with a decrease in the winter cold," a former Taliban governor of Kandahar province, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rahmani, said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
Former Taliban governor Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rahmani
Fighting in Afghanistan traditionally eases off during the winter when mountain passes get snowed under.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for an explosion yesterday that the US military said killed four troops. The Taliban said nine Americans were killed and US forces were "helpless" in the face of such attacks.
Violence has surged in recent months, including 15 suicide blasts since November, as Nato members led by Britain, Canada and The Netherlands prepare to expand their peacekeeping mission.
At the same time, the United States is hoping to withdraw about 3,000 of the more than 18,000 troops it has in a separate force battling the insurgency.
US military officials say the Taliban have changed tactics since suffering heavy losses in clashes early last summer and are now increasingly using roadside bombs and suicide blasts against soft targets.
But Rahmani said the Taliban had grown stronger since they were ousted by US and Afghan opposition forces after the September 11th attacks in 2001, and the suicide bombers were helping to drive US forces out.
"American forces have become helpless before the Taliban's suicide and other attacks," he said.
"The Taliban are inflicting heavy losses on American forces in men and material and it is to hide the cowardice and failure of their troops that America is reducing its forces."
The deployment of about 3,300 British troops in southern Afghanistan later this year would give the Taliban more targets to attack, he said.