United Press International,
WASHINGTON: U.S. officials insist resurgent Taliban forces are still not a strategic threat in Afghanistan despite unprecedented troop casualties, a record drug harvest and a claim by one top NATO military commander that daily violence is now more intense than in Iraq.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded over the weekend the Taliban has in recent months demonstrated a tenacity unseen since the U.S.-led 2001 invasion that toppled the regime in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks for harboring al-Qaida operatives. “Of course they're going to fight back, even if they're on the ropes,” she told Fox News Sunday. “And yes, they came back somewhat more organized and somewhat more capable than people would have expected.”
NATO officials report that more than 420 Taliban militants were killed in the past nine days alone during heavy fighting the in southern Kandahar province, a militant stronghold, where some 20,000 multinational troops are deployed.
Vice President Dick Cheney also sought to downplay the insurgency, noting that al-Qaida training camps in the country were razed at the Taliban's ouster. “There were training camps in Afghanistan, training thousands of al-Qaida terrorists,” he said on Meet the Press. “All those training camps today are shut down.”
But Osama bin Laden and his minions are believed to be in hiding in the lawless tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. And the Taliban has rearmed and regrouped in southern and eastern provinces sparking pitched battles that have killed more than 100 American and NATO soldiers in the past nine months. This amounts to roughly twice the number of dead over the same period last year.
Two of those U.S. servicemen died in a brazen suicide bombing Friday near the U.S. embassy in Kabul, which killed at least 14 Afghan civilians and burst the notion the seat of President Hamid Karzai's embattled government is an oasis of security when compared to the rest of the country.
