Taliban have expanded influence across Afghanistan: NATO

The Afghan Taliban have expanded their influence across Afghanistan and are now running a 'full-fledged insurgency’ with their own 'governors’ in all but one of the country’s provinces, a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) intelligence official said. "Time is running out. We’ve got about a year to prove that our strategy can actually work. The Taliban has shadow governors in 33 out of the 34 provinces," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a small group of reporters. "So he (the Taliban) has got a government-in-waiting. He has got ministers," he added. Violence in Afghanistan has reached some of its highest levels in the eight-year war and the United States President Barack Obama is sending in 30,000 extra troops as part of his new war strategy, to try to turn the tide. Other NATO countries are sending some 7,000 more. But Washington’s plan also calls for US troop levels to be scaled down from 2011 and the White House has said the United States will not be in Afghanistan in eight or nine years’ time. The Taliban are willing to wait. "The insurgency is confident and are looking towards a post-ISAF Afghanistan," he said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. "If we are going to be successful, this has to be perceived as an international effort, almost a struggle, and it is a struggle, to stop or deter this notion of Islamic extremism." There are already around 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan but despite the numbers, they are locked in a stalemate with the Taliban, unable to stem the rising tide of suicide and roadside bomb attacks. With the improvised explosive device (IED) or roadside bomb, the Taliban have found their weapon of choice against the foreign troops, the official said, adding 'kinetic’ events had risen by 300 percent since 2007. The official said in 2003, foreign forces dealt with 81 IEDs, that figure rose to over 7,200 for 2009. This figure includes IEDs that had exploded and those that were found and cleared. "This is not meant to be a joke, but whoever is their logistics chief, you know, we ought to be taking lessons from them. Because that’s pretty good for an enemy insurgent force to generate that kind of capability," the official said. Foreign troop casualties are at their highest since the war began and public support is waning. More than 1,500 soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the war started in late 2001 and twice as many Americans have died so far this year compared to 2008.