Taliban say attacks will increase, U.S. “helpless”

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban
guerrillas are gaining strength and will step up attacks
against government and foreign troops when spring comes next
month, a Taliban commander said on Tuesday.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a blast on Monday
that the U.S. military said killed four troops. The Taliban
said nine Americans were killed and U.S. forces were helpless
in the face of such attacks.

“Taliban attacks will further increase with a decrease in
the winter cold,” a former Taliban governor of Kandahar
province, Mullah Mohammad Hassan Rahmani, told Reuters by
satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.

Fighting in Afghanistan traditionally eases off during the
winter when mountain passes get snowed under.

But violence has surged in recent months, including 15
suicide blasts since November, as NATO members led by Britain,
Canada and the Netherlands prepare to expand their peacekeeping
mission.

At the same time, the United States is hoping to withdraw
about 3,000 of the more than 18,000 troops it has in a separate
force battling the insurgency.

U.S. military officials say the Taliban have changed
tactics since suffering heavy losses in clashes early last
summer and are now increasingly using roadside bombs and
suicide blasts against soft targets.

But Rahmani said the Taliban had grown stronger since they
were ousted by U.S. and Afghan opposition forces after the
September 11 attacks in 2001, and the suicide bombers were
helping to drive U.S. forces out.

“American forces have become helpless before the Taliban’s
suicide and other attacks,” he said.

“The Taliban are inflicting heavy losses on American forces
in men and material and it is to hide the cowardice and failure
of their troops that America is reducing its forces.”

The deployment of about 3,300 British troops in southern
Afghanistan later this year would give the Taliban more targets
to attack, he said.

“An increase in foreign forces in Afghanistan will provide
the Taliban easy targets and make it easier for them to attack
and inflict losses,” Rahmani said.

British forces are going to be stationed in Helmand
province, while the Dutch will be in Uruzgan, where the U.S.
troops were killed on Monday. Canada will soon have about 2,000
troops in Kandahar, another insurgent hotspot in the south.

Most Afghans say they need foreign troops in their country
to ensure security.