Four years after US forces launched their offensive to overthrow the Taleban, the guerrillas vowed on Friday to continue their holy war to rid Afghanistan of foreign troops.
Taleban military chief Mullah Dadullah told Reuters that Afghanistan had become a "hub of disturbance, killings, looting and drugs" since the Taleban's overthrow in late 2001.
Dadullah, speaking by satellite phone from an undisclosed location, denounced presidential and legislative elections in October 2004, and September 18 this year as US-staged "dramas".
He said the latest polls for a national assembly and provincial councils had brought in "old murderers and warlords". "Those who were happy over the fall of the Taleban have now realised the American occupation of their country was just for the sake of American interests," he said.
"It's proven the Americans occupied our country by raising the bogey of terrorism and have no sympathy with Afghans."
Dadullah called Afghanistan a "drug-manufacturing factory" with government ministers involved in the narcotics trade.
"We will continue our jihad until we drive out foreign troops from our country," he said.
US-led forces overthrew the Taleban in late 2001 after the fundamentalists refused to had over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11 attacks on US cities.
Four years on, bin Laden and Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar remain at large and the Taleban continue to wage a guerrilla war against President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and around 30,000 foreign troops.
More than 1,000 people - mostly militants, but including more than 50 US troops, have died this year, the bloodiest since 2001.
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