Taliban fighters talk tactics – while safe in Pakistan

The 22-year-old doesn't look like the traditional turbaned Taliban commander. His black hair shoots out at all angles from beneath a red cap. He smiles easily and has a neatly trimmed beard.

But Hilal says he is the co-leader of 200 Taliban fighters who operate across the border in Afghanistan. "Two years ago, we only attacked Afghan officials, but now we have so many Talibs that we can attack Americans," he boasts.

In a rare interview with a Western reporter, Hilal and three other Afghan Taliban fighters describe how they slip into Afghanistan, attack NATO and Afghan forces, and return to Pakistan to rest.

"Everybody in the neighborhood knows we are Talibs," says Noman, a 19-year-old fighter with a blue-white block-printed turban. "Paki-stan is a little bit free for us."

The interview was conducted over two days in a small house made of yellow mud in Pakistan's Balochistan Province. The fighters, who won't give their real names, say they are here for a refresher course in Taliban ideology in a Pakistani religious school.

"We are enormously organized," brags Mustafa, a 20-year-old wearing a black turban usually favored by conservative Muslims.

"Even British defense officials say they face a lot of problems from the Taliban."

A year ago, such confident talk from Taliban fighters could have been chalked up to bravado. But with more than 50 suicide attacks in the past six months, resistance by large Taliban units in the increasingly volatile provinces of Kandahar and Helmand in the south, and a greater willingness of Taliban fighters to come out into the open and speak their minds are all indications that the Taliban resurgence is no longer a matter of conjecture.

This year has been a difficult one for the US, coalition, and Afghan forces. With US commanders handing control of the south over to its British, Canadian, Dutch, and other allies in NATO, the Taliban are making the transfer a bloody one. How NATO forces fare in the south could determine whether the democratically elected government of President Hamid Karzai – and indeed, the experiment in Afghan democracy itself – succeeds or fails.

Commander Hilal says that currently 40 of his troops are in Afghanistan fighting, and 160 are "refreshing their ideology" in Pakistan. Hilal says that he discusses military plans by cellphone and satellite phone with higher Taliban commanders who are all in Afghanistan.

Hilal says his fighters operate in groups of 20 to 25 men in the Afghan provinces Ghazni and Zabul. There are 35 groups active in Zabul's capital, Qalat, and 20 to 25 in the rest of by American forces controlled province.

Mustafa, in the black turban, says that the Talibs cross the border alone or in twos. Depending on the crossing point, he says – listing Pakistan border cities of Chaman, Badini, and Torkham – it takes one or two nights to join up with other Taliban fighters, he says. "The majority have Pakistani identity cards, so crossing the border is no problem," he says.

The Taliban fighters return to a different house in Pakistan every month, but say that they must be very careful in Afghanistan, says Noman, a gaunt-faced young man who says he wants to learn English. But Mustafa adds that they are no longer in hiding in Afghanistan. "We are now 200 to 300 at a time and can roam around freely," he says.

Prior to every mission, they get training in one of the many training camps in the Afghan mountains, says the 22-year-old Ali, who is quiet through most of the interview.

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