KABUL, 9 March 2005 — Fugitive Taleban leader Mulla Omar issued a rare statement yesterday saying his fighters will increase attacks on government and foreign forces in Afghanistan once the harsh Afghan winter gave way to spring. The statement, issued through a spokesman, was a riposte to US Maj. Gen. Eric T. Olson that Taleban attacks had “decreased dramatically” and Omar was no longer able to exercise control over the insurgents.
“This is part of America’s psychological war aimed at demoralizing the Taleban and creating rifts amongst them,” Omar said in a statement read by spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi to a Reuters correspondent in Kabul. “I have support not only from Muslims in Afghanistan, but from around the world,” said Omar. Remnants of Omar’s hard-line Islamist militia have kept up an insurgency since being driven from power in late 2001 for giving shelter to Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama Bin Laden, following the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks in the United States.
Hakimi also telephoned another Reuters reporter claiming the Taleban was responsible for the killing of a British man in Kabul on Monday night, but security sources in the Afghan capital doubted the veracity of the claim, saying it appeared opportunist and the Taleban had often made false claims in the past. Hakimi said Omar had told his deputy, Mulla Obaidullah to initiate an attack that would send a clear signal to the Americans that the Taleban command could order a strike whenever it chose.
Meanwhile, a British man working for Afghanistan’s government was shot dead in a late night ambush as he drove through central Kabul, breaking months of calm in the capital, officials said yesterday.
Steven MacQueen, an adviser to Afghanistan’s minister for rural affairs, was tailed by two cars as he passed down a street close to the Dutch Embassy and a guest house used by UN workers on Monday night, witnesses told security advisers to foreign workers in Afghanistan.
One car pulled in front, blocking MacQueen’s four-wheel drive, and his killers opened fire. MacQueen was hit several times and died on the spot, security sources said.
