Brother of assassinated Northern Alliance chief Ahmed Shah Masood, Ahmad Wali Masood disparaged the US bombing of his country as a ''waste of time'', but said a recent switch to targeting Taliban frontlines had encouraged him. Ahmad Wali Masood, who heads the London embassy of the Afghan government ousted by the Taliban in 1996, also criticised UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for including in his team a man he described as biased in favour of the ruling Taliban. Masood said that Washington had until recently pursued a mistaken strategy of bombing Taliban targets in cities and easily replaceable training camps of Osama bin Laden in the hope of promoting an anti-Taliban rising among the Pashtun majority.
''It was a waste of time,'' he told a news agency on Wednesday. ''They should only have bombed the frontlines and coordinated with US 100 percent. If they'd done so, we would have seen a major result by now.'' Masood said coordination had now improved in the past few days and the emphasis had shifted to the battle fronts, away from urban areas where civilian casualties were inevitable.
Forces of the Opposition Northern Alliance had made little headway, partly because the Taliban had sent reinforcements to the front, calculating they would be safe from US bombs there. ''They have also laid thousands of mines and brought up many heavy guns,'' he said. ''But if Taliban lines are really hit hard, our forces are ready to go on the offensive.''
US warplanes carpet-bombed the Taliban front line north of the Afghan capital Kabul for the first time on Wednesday, taking advantage of better information, partly supplied by a small number of American ground troops now inside the country.
The United States said this week it had a small number of ground troops in Afghanistan to liaise with Northern Alliance leaders and provide intelligence to the attackers.
Bureau Report