Posted on 11/08/2006 6:20:36 PM PST by Lorianne
BALOCHISTAN PROVINCE, PAKISTAN – The 22-year-old doesn't look like the traditional turbaned Taliban commander. His black hair shoots out at all angles from beneath a red cap. He smiles easily and has a neatly trimmed beard.
But Hilal says he is the co-leader of 200 Taliban fighters who operate across the border in Afghanistan. "Two years ago, we only attacked Afghan officials, but now we have so many Talibs that we can attack Americans," he boasts.
In a rare interview with a Western reporter, Hilal and three other Afghan Taliban fighters describe how they slip into Afghanistan, attack NATO and Afghan forces, and return to Pakistan to rest.
"Everybody in the neighborhood knows we are Talibs," says Noman, a 19-year-old fighter with a blue-white block-printed turban. "Paki-stan is a little bit free for us."
The interview was conducted over two days in a small house made of yellow mud in Pakistan's Balochistan Province. The fighters, who won't give their real names, say they are here for a refresher course in Taliban ideology in a Pakistani religious school.
"We are enormously organized," brags Mustafa, a 20-year-old wearing a black turban usually favored by conservative Muslims.
"Even British defense officials say they face a lot of problems from the Taliban."
A year ago, such confident talk from Taliban fighters could have been chalked up to bravado. But with more than 50 suicide attacks in the past six months, resistance by large Taliban units in the increasingly volatile provinces of Kandahar and Helmand in the south, and a greater willingness of Taliban fighters to come out into the open and speak their minds are all indications that the Taliban resurgence is no longer a matter of conjecture.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Do not be surprized when Pakistan asks the US to remove itself from their territory and refuse to allow us to overfly their territory. They now have to mend their own fences since the Dims have stated we are cowards and have to hightail it back home.
I see no reason not to massively bomb all terrorist sanctuaries along the border in Pakistan. I really don't care what Pakistan thinks. We are in a war and we must fight it like a war.
Why does this story want to make me laugh uncontrollably?
Because the alternative is to cry ....
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