Terror Tutors Revive Threat From Taliban

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 7-27-2003 | Massoud Ansari

[blam]

Terror tutors revive threat from Taliban

By Massoud Ansari in Chaman, Pakistan
(Filed: 27/07/2003)

A week after he left the lawless Kandhar province in Afghanistan, Mir Jan, a terrorist trainer, was impatient to return. Eager pupils awaited: a new generation of Taliban recruits who are taught how to fight American troops and turn themselves into human bombs.

To avoid detection, Jan is constantly on the move, travelling from village to village and back across the border with Pakistan, but always plotting his return. He holds classes in explosives, hands out maps of American bases and tells the young volunteers how best to attack them.

"Jihad is in the blood of every Afghan," said Jan. "We fought the British, drove out Russians and now we would convert Afghanistan into a graveyard for Americans."

Last week Afghanistan's struggling government urged Pakistan to do more to prevent Taliban fighters such as Jan from crossing the border, using Pakistan's tribal areas as a refuge from which to attack Afghan targets.

Ali Ahmad Jalali, Afghanistan's interior minister, said Afghans were angry at Pakistan's failure to clamp down. "They see people coming from across the border to kill foreign workers who are helping Afghans," he said. "They go and escape across the border. People have this question: why is it happening?"

However, nothing promised by Pakistan has dented the Taliban's confidence. Even as 1,000 men from Afghanistan's new national army joined coalition forces hunting for al-Qaeda members in the southern Paktia province, just across the border Jan was boasting of the Taliban's strength.

His recruits bristle with rocket propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles. "We don't need to teach them the art of using arms because operating guns is our culture and their baby," he said proudly.

"We teach them how to make explosives, how to make and detonate remote control bombs. You don't need any high quality instrument or gadgets to make a remote control bomb. You can use the timers of washing machines or even fans."

While he waited for the word from his Taliban bosses to go back into Afghanistan, Jan stayed in a refugee camp in Chaman, south-western Pakistan. A veteran who fought against the Soviet Union 20 years ago, he lost two brothers in American air raids in Afghanistan launched after the September 11 attacks.

He holds his "classes" in the southern provinces of Spin Boldak, Kandhar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Hilmand, and the eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman - all Taliban strongholds.

About 100 Afghan troops and civilians have been killed in attacks that have become more frequent since Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taliban, set up a "jihad shoora" to issue decrees against the presence of international troops.

Up to 2,500 militant Taliban sympathisers and al-Qaeda operatives have regrouped in response to the shoora. "They have proved to be effective because they are mostly relying on hit-and-run, or guerrilla warfare," said an Afghan official.

According to Jan, the Taliban fighters are still drawing on caches of arms which were hastily hidden before Kabul fell to the coalition invasion troops. "We have rocket propelled grenades and we also have al-Qaeda's suicide squads with us, who are like walking bombs," he said.

"Above all we have our mighty will. You will see that we will cut them, cut them and cut them until they beg for mercy."

[Diogenesis]

As said before -- it took 2 (almost 3) bombs to stop the Japanese.

The Islamic terrorists are not as intelligent, and will take a louder wake-up-call

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list