KABUL (Agencies)
The Taliban marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States on Saturday by calling on American forces to withdraw unconditionally and end the "illegal occupation" of Afghanistan.
In a statement that also coincided with the Eid holiday, marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the Taliban said the United States had no chance of bringing peace to Afghanistan after nearly nine years of war.
As NATO allies pulled out their troops, Americans had become targets both at home and abroad, said the statement, emailed to news organizations.
"Nine years after September 11, despite using all possible military solutions in Afghanistan, now they have lost any possible chance for peace," the statement said of the United States.
"They are left with only one option and that is to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan without any preconditions.
"They do not have the right to impose conditions and preconditions for leaving Afghanistan because, first, their occupation of Afghanistan was illegal and also, second, they have been defeated in this illegal invasion," it said.
The United States and NATO have 150,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting to quell the Taliban insurgency, which began soon after the Islamists' brutal five-year regime was toppled in a U.S.-led invasion.
Military leaders, including the commander of international forces U.S. General David Petraeus, agree that the Taliban's footprint has spread in recent years, especially to the once-peaceful north.
The insurgency is concentrated in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, populated largely by ethnic Pashtuns who are the bedrock of the Taliban and its fight against the Kabul government.
President Hamid Karzai, kept in power by the coalition forces, is trying to open a dialogue with the Taliban leadership to bring the war to a speedy end, as United States troops are expected to begin drawing down next July.
The Dutch have already withdrawn and the Canadians are due to end their mission next year.
The Taliban has used U.S. President Barack Obama's deadline for the start of a drawdown against the coalition, saying it shows how the war has turned in its favor.
"The international coalition they (the United States) befriended at the beginning, now realizing the reality, have started to withdraw their forces from Afghanistan to free themselves from this problem," the statement said.
Kissinger urges regional engagement in Afghanistan
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Afghanistan's neighbors need to be engaged in order to find a long-term solution to the conflict there.
Pakistan, Iran, China and India all have an interest in preventing a Taliban victory and al-Qaeda from establishing itself in Afghanistan, Kissinger told an international security conference in Geneva on Friday.
"The presence of a terrorist, drug-producing state in that geographic location will affect every country," Kissinger said.
"For Pakistan it will undermine whatever order exists today," he said, adding that Shiite-majority Iran would also be threatened by a fundamentalist Sunni regime in Kabul.
"In many respects India will be the most affected country if a jihadist Islamism gains impetus in Afghanistan," said Kissinger. "Even China, with its problems in Xinjian, cannot be indifferent," he said, referring to China's northwestern province which has recently seen increased Muslim unrest.
The 87-year-old, who negotiated U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam conflict, said "an essentially unilateral American role cannot be the long-term solution" for Afghanistan.
Kissinger's speech prompted protests outside the conference venue by Chilean and Argentine groups angry at his support for military dictatorships there during his time as secretary of state in the 1970s.
British soldier shot in Afghanistan dies of injuries
British soldier shot in Afghanistan dies of injuries
A British soldier who was injured in southern Afghanistan last month has died in hospital in Birmingham, central England, the Ministry of Defense said Saturday.
The death of the soldier from the 2nd Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, brings the total number of British soldiers who have died in operations in Afghanistan to 335 since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
The soldier was shot in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province on August 23, and finally succumbed to his injuries at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on Friday.
About 10,000 British troops are fighting in Afghanistan as part of a 150,000-strong international force battling Taliban militants.
No comments:
Post a Comment