The Taliban do not pose a strategic threat to the Afghan government in Kabul, despite mounting attacks by the Islamist militia near the capital, British Defence Secretary Des Browne said Thursday. Speaking to the BBC, Browne acknowledged that the Taliban was capable of mounting major attacks on Kabul, but dismissed the suggestion that it posed a major threat.
"There have been an increase in these attacks, but they are indiscriminate attacks, they are individual attacks," Browne told the broadcaster. "In no sense have they created or can they make a strategic threat to the government of Afghanistan." He was speaking just days after 10 French soldiers were killed in the deadliest battle for international forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 ousting of the Taliban.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a lightning visit to Kabul on Thursday that Britain was "utterly resolute" in supporting Afghanistan as it pursued democracy. Browne continued: "I don't deny that the Taliban are capable of mounting attacks of that nature ... Their ability to be able to do that, however, is not evidence that they are a strategic threat." "If you look, for example, at Helmand province, where we progressively have been spreading security, every single centre of population ... is in the control of the Afghan government."
Britain has 8,500 troops in ISAF, according to the alliance force, most of them in southern Helmand province - a hotspot for Taliban violence. The Taliban were driven from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001 because they would not hand over their al Qaeda allies wanted for the September 11 attacks on the United States. But they regrouped, with some of them taking refuge in Pakistan, to launch a snowballing insurgency that military officials say is attracting more Arab, Pakistani and other Muslim fighters.
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