Those pesky Taliban types, driven from their brutal reign, are now at odds with each other over their inability to hamper the recent Afghan elections.
Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has had a serious falling-out with some of his lieutenants, who blame him for the rebels’ failure to launch a major assault during landmark Afghan presidential elections, the US military said today.
The October 9 poll was largely peaceful, and US military spokesman Major Scott Nelson claimed that intelligence reports from Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan showed this had demoralised the Taliban militia.
“There’s been serious disagreements between Mullah Omar and some of his lower commanders on the strategy for the follow-up after the election,” Major Nelson said. “There’s a lot of frustration with his lack of effectiveness in disrupting the election.”
Omar, whose hardline Islamic regime harboured Osama bin Laden, has been at large since US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001. The rebels have repeatedly mounted attacks in the past year on government and coalition targets.
Major Nelson said he still saw “indications the man (Omar) is involved in planning Taliban operations” in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but conceded the military didn’t know in which of the two countries the one-eyed rebel leader was hiding.
The US military, which has 18,000 forces hunting al-Qaeda and Taliban holdouts in Afghanistan, has hailed the election as a body blow to the rebels because their threats to sabotage it failed to come true.
An estimated 8 million Afghans turned out to vote, and US-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai appears set to become the country’s first directly elected leader after a quarter-century of conflict.
This is the effect of the continuing and relatively unsung pressure that has been placed on the bad guys in Afghanistan. The Taliban militia is essentially castrated, hoping for terrorism while unable to take the field in any significant manner for fear of being shredded. They cannot even pretend to keep up a sustained guerilla campaign, as the Afghan national army continues to train and grow.
It must suck for Omar to be stuck on the mountainous sidelines, watching the freedom he despises beginning to take root. Afghanistan, and indeed the whole world, will be better off with death of the last Taliban scum.