Kabul, Jan 21: The insurgent Taliban said on Wednesday that US President Barack Obama should learn from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and pull his troops out of the country to allow Afghans to decide their own fate.
"We have no problem with Obama," a spokesman for the
extremist Islamist movement told agencies after the inauguration of
the new US president.
However "he must learn lessons from (former US president
George W) Bush and before that the Soviets," Yousuf Ahmadi
said by telephone.
Afghan mujahedeen (holy warriors) drove out Soviet
occupiers in 1989 after a 10-year war which the Taliban says
has parallels with its fight against the US-backed Afghan
government and its international allies.
After a difficult 2008, Washington is expected to send up
to 30,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan, shifting the focus
from Iraq in its "war on terror".
But Ahmadi said the United States should "stop making
their young sons suffer in Afghanistan".
"The only solution is that they leave Afghanistan," he
said.
"We are a free nation, as they are. They have come here
and they want to decide our fate for us. This is not possible.
We Afghans want to decide our fate ourselves."
The government of President Hamid Karzai depends on
international military support to fight the extremist
insurgency, which has some backing from Al-Qaeda, and aid
money to rebuild after decades of war.
Karzai has called on the insurgents to put down their
weapons and join the new democratic political process.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 00:00