Taliban chief vows ‘safe retreat’ for foreign troops - Yahoo! News
Taliban chief vows ‘safe retreat’ for foreign troops
19 minutes ago
KABUL (AFP) - Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar on Tuesday offered international forces safe passage if they withdrew from Afghanistan and ordered his fighters to drop certain tactics, such as attacks in mosques.
In a traditional message for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival posted on a Taliban website, the fugitive former leader of Afghanistan also told his fighters to avoid civilian casualties as they battle Afghan and foreign troops.
He said that if US and NATO troops fighting his hardline militia failed to take up the offer of a safe withdrawal, they would suffer a defeat like Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“I say to the invaders: if you leave our country, we will provide you the safe context to do so,” said Omar, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head.
“If you insist on your invasion, you will be defeated like the Russians before you.”
The Red Army pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 after 10 years of fighting that cost the lives of at least 10,000 Soviet troops. A civil war followed after which Omar’s Taliban movement took power in 1996.
Omar’s government was overthrown in an campaign led by a US-led coalition and supported by Afghan anti-Taliban groups weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington blamed on Taliban allies, Al-Qaeda.
The elected government of President Hamid Karzai relies on the coalition and a separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to fight the extremist’s insurgency, which has costs thousands of lives over seven years.
Most of the dead are rebel fighters and Afghan civilians killed in Taliban suicide bombings or in military action by international powers, generally air strikes.
The message from “Mullah Omar Mujahed (fighter)” urged Taliban fighters to “stand like steel in front of the enemy” but take care to avoid harming civilians.
It also told fighters to stop “action which is not compliant with Islamic law and culture” including bombings in mosques and crowded areas, stealing people’s property, and cutting off the ears of people.
He also told them to stop burning school books.
So he is “alive”. Why is he NOW realising the “unIslamic” acts of his followers? Can this “message” make any difference in Talibanic practices?
