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Exactly 13 years on from the U.S.- led military coalition' invasion on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the Afghans are still suffering at the hands of Taliban militants and will likely suffer in the years ahead, Afghans from all walks of life including public opinion leaders believe.
On Oct. 7, 2001, the U.S.-led coalition forces launched massive air bombardments against Taliban positions in Kabul, Kandahar and other big Afghan cities, which led to the collapse of the Taliban' s six-year brutal reign in the country.
The Taliban hierarchy had been toppled within one month. Thousands of Taliban fighters and their al-Qaida backers had been killed, arrested, hidden among locals or escaped to Pakistan's lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan and thus raising the ray of hope among war-weary Afghans for a peaceful future.
But unfortunately, the reality is never that rosy.
"In fact, the Taliban attacks claim the lives of Afghans every day and even today (Saturday) two people were killed and five others injured in Helmand province; while four others sustained injuries in Taliban-related activities in the capital city Kabul," Mahmoud, 19, a student told Xinhua on Saturday. "Their (Taliban) objective is to kill people irrespective of their age, gender or profession," Mahmoud said.
From a similar viewpoint, a daily wager, Mohammad Salim in talks with Xinhua said that the Taliban militants as seen in the past will continue to kill people in future.
Salim, 27, who left his home due to the Taliban war in the Sangin district of Helmand province a month ago, said his father was killed at the hand of Taliban militants about two years ago. He said he is afraid he himself might be killed by militants in the future.
"The U.S.-led Coalition forces' failure to diminish Taliban militants over the past 13 years has boosted the militants' morale to continue their militancy in future," a political analyst Nazari Pariani observed in talks with Xinhua.
Pariani, who is also the editor in chief of the newspaper Daily Mandegar, also was of the view that the Taliban outfit terms the U. S.-led forces withdrawal from Afghanistan by the year end as " defeat of occupying troops" and would continue to intensify their activities in future.
The U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF)are going to end their combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, trusting the Afghan national security forces with the responsibility to ensure their own country's future peace and stability.
Taliban militants, who had spurned Kabul's offers for talks during former president Hamid Karzai's term, in an online statement recently slammed the new Afghan administration -- the national unity government as being a U.S. servant and vowed to continue war until the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate, the one deposed 13 years ago by the U.S.-led military campaign.
According to Afghans, the only achievement of U.S. troops over the past 13 years is killing al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan, although no one has seen his body. But the Taliban's elusive chief Mullah Mohammad Omar is still leading his fighters to conduct deadly attacks, even in the fortified capital city of Kabul 13 years later.
In a statement posted on its website on Saturday to mark the 13th year since the U.S.-led collation' invasion against the Taliban's former regime, the Taliban described the achievements of the 13-year presence of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan as " promotion of corruption, drug addiction, economic & social problems, insecurity and obscenity" in the country.
The Taliban in the statement denounced the recently inked security pact -- the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with Washington -- and repeated its resolve to continue the war until foreign forces have been completely evicted from Afghanistan.
The Taliban's harsh statements, according to Afghan observers, omened endless instability in the conflict-ridden central Asian state. Enditem
