Agence France Presse, 20 March 2006
The Taliban have abandoned attempts at a serious military campaign in Afghanistan and are now fighting a propaganda war, the US military said, despite an increase in attacks by the rebels.
"The insurgents have clearly failed in their objectives to establish a regional control in Afghanistan," US chief military spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts told a regular news conference in Kabul.
"So they shifted their tactics to tactics such as improvised explosive devices (IED). They have shifted to a propaganda war instead of a tactical war," he said.
Rebels loyal to the former Taliban regime, which was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001, are still waging an intense insurgency against the 20,000-strong US-led coalition and thousands of Afghan troops.
Violence linked to the Taliban claimed around 1,700 lives last year, including nearly 100 US soldiers along with many militants. Another nine American troops have died since January this year.
Afghanistan has seen more than 30 suicide car bombings and roadside bombings in recent months that are similar to those seen in Iraq, while the Taliban are avoiding pitched battles against the superior firepower of the US-led forces.
Yonts said that some insurgent methods seen in Iraq were being used by Taliban militants, but he added that the technology used by Iraqi fighters had not come to Afghanistan.
"We see the same form of tactics but not the same technology," he said.
"The enemy shifted to IEDs. We also shifted our tactics, our intelligence and our operations to combat that shift," he said.
On Sunday a French soldier with the US-led force suffered minor injuries when a suicide car bomber slammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a coalition convoy in violence-prone southern Afghanistan.
---------------------
Citation: "Afghanistan's Taliban shifts to propaganda war: US," Agence France Presse, 20 March 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060320/pl_afp/afghanistanusiraq_060320140025
---------------------