Unholy Allies (Taliban/Iraqi Rebels)

Unholy Allies
The Taliban haven't quit, and some are getting help and inspiration from Iraq.


By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau
Newsweek
Sept. 26, 2005 issue - At sundown, the most-wanted man in Ghazni province comes roaring down a country road astride his motorcycle. Mohammed Daud, 35, commands the biggest Taliban force in this area roughly 100 miles southwest of Kabul. But today he travels with just one bodyguard. The two bikes wheel into a melon patch, trailed by a billowing cloud of red dust. Climbing off his machine, Daud launches into a glowing account of where he spent the first few months of this year and what he's done since his return. "I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," he tells a NEWSWEEK correspondent. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance."

A crueler setback would be hard to imagine for America and its Afghan allies. At the same time as more than 12 million registered Afghan voters were getting ready last week for their first real parliamentary elections since 1969, insurgents in Baghdad continued their homicidal campaign to make Iraq ungovernable. In the Iraqi capital's deadliest day of direct attacks since the U.S. invasion, terrorists slaughtered more than 160 people—most of them civilians, including roughly 112 jobseekers at a hiring center for day laborers. After nearly three decades of unrelenting carnage in Afghanistan, even some Taliban veterans may not have the stomach for Iraq's levels of indiscriminate bloodshed.

Nevertheless, Daud and other Taliban leaders tell NEWSWEEK that the Afghan conflict is entering a new phase, with help from Iraq. According to them, Osama bin Laden has opened an underground railroad to and from jihadist training camps in the Sunni Triangle. Self-described graduates of the program say they've come home to Afghanistan with more-effective killing techniques and renewed enthusiasm for the war against the West. Daud says he's been communicating a "new momentum and spirit" to the 300 fighters under his command.

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