Taliban Resistance Conducting A War Of Liberation

Courtesy Of: USA Today
Posted 2/16/2007 12:58 PM ET
usatoday

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Taliban-led insurgents are winning ever-greater public support in Afghanistan for a struggle that is taking on the character of a "liberation war" against foreign troops, a senior Pakistani official claimed Friday.

The remark by the governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province could inflame further a war of words between Kabul and Islamabad about who is responsible for the resurgence of militant activity in Afghanistan.

...Ali Mohammed Jan Aurakzai, ...said cross-border attacks accounted for only a fraction of the insurgency in Afghanistan.

The main reason for the Taliban's return was the frustration of ethnic Pashtuns seeking more political say in Kabul and resentment of ongoing military operations and the lack of ecnomic aid in the south and east of Afghanistan, he said.

"Today, they've reached the stage that a lot of the local population has started supporting the militant operations and it is developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a resistance movement, sort of a liberation war against coalition forces," Aurakzai told reporters at a news conference.

...Aurakzai, a former general, defended a September peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal agency and disputed suggestions that it had led to a surge in crossborder attacks.

Pakistan-based militants may cause, at most, "20 percent of the problem in Afghanistan," he said.

He also forecast that the militants will take years to defeat, and forecast that the Kabul government and its foreign backers will one day have to negotiate with the Taliban, who draw their support mainly from ethnic Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, to secure peace.

"Eventually, all issues will have to be resolved through dialogue on the negotiating table," he said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.