- guardian.co.uk, Sunday June 16 2002 02.18 BST
- The Observer, Sunday June 16 2002
Mohamed was one of the few senior Taliban figures with access to Mullah Omar, the reclusive one-eyed cleric who led the radical Islamic movement currently being hunted by British and American soldiers in the deserts of south-east Afghanistan. He was also, he says, a friend of bin Laden.
Now Mohamed, and other senior Taliban leaders in hiding in Pakistan, have said that they are planning to launch a guerrilla campaign following the conclusion of the loya jirga, the assembly being held in Kabul which will pick a new government for Afghanistan.
'Soon our men will begin to move and then you will see how many we are. With the help of Allah, we will hurl the foreigners out of our country,' said Mohamed last week. Hundreds of British troops still in Afghanistan are likely to be a target of any Taliban campaign.
Mohamed said the Taliban would be helped by a groundswell of support among Afghans from the predominantly ethnic Pashtun areas in the south and east. Many people are angry at continued ethnic Tajik influence in Kabul and have been angered by the US military operation.
Although hunted by US special agents, the Taliban were happy to speak to The Observer after contact was made through intermediaries. The four Taliban commanders, interviewed last week, said they were unafraid of the Americans and the Pakistani authorities, and were having little difficulty regrouping.
Two said that 'scores' of senior Taliban were meeting this weekend in the frontier town of Quetta - on the instructions of Mullah Omar himself - to plan their future strategy.
'We are Afghans and we have rights and duties. If the foreigners do not leave, we will have to fight them,' Ahsadullah Safi, the former police chief of Paktia province, said.
Taj Mohamed described how he had fled to Pakistan after Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance in November last year. With hundreds of other Taliban fighters and commanders, he crossed the frontier near the eastern city of Khost. The Taliban had regrouped around the cave complex of Tora Bora, he said, where fighters loyal to bin Laden later made a stand. Mohamed returned to Afghanistan to fight during the battles against US forces at Shah-e-Kot in March.
'Hiding has been easy. No one can stop us. We have been waiting and getting stronger. The time to launch our campaign to free our homeland is very close,' Mohamed said.
There is evidence that the radical Islamists in the region are gathering strength. A fatwa against British and American forces issued by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the hardline former mujahideen leader, is circulating in Peshawar. It calls for a 'new jihad'.
