ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban geared up for threatened U.S. attacks Monday by mobilizing troops, seizing U.N. food stocks and appealing to the American people to avert a ``vain and bloody war.'' (Read photo caption below)But their chief spokesman insisted the isolated leadership would still not hand over Osama bin Laden unless Washington, which blames him for the devastating September 11 suicide plane attacks in the United States, provides evidence.
The 44-year-old Saudi-born fugitive in a rare message sent to al-Jazeera television in Qatar, urged Pakistanis to bar U.S. troops from using their country as a springboard for ``the new Jewish crusader campaign led by the biggest crusader (President George W.) Bush.'' But the Taliban are already fighting in the north where they have been waging a long-running civil war, and admitted losing Zari, a town 60 miles south of Mazar-i-Sharif, to Northern Alliance forces advancing on the strategic city.
Further resistance came from Ismail Khan, the opposition commander who was once governor of Herat, who said he was rallying up to 7,000 men to win back the western Afghan city from the Taliban, whose forces he said were badly equipped and crumbling under the threat of all-out war.
In a message relayed simultaneously in Kabul, Islamabad and the Gulf, Taliban officials said they were reinforcing their army by mobilizing an additional 300,000 men -- a figure Pakistani experts on Afghanistan consider improbable.
``In view of the current conditions, 300,000 well-experienced and equipped men have been stationed in the center (of the country), at borders and other significant areas in addition to its former detachments,'' Defense Minister Mullah Obaidullah said in a statement sent to Reuters in Kabul.
PHOTO CAPTION:
The U.S. cannot win its 'war on terrorism' by killing Osama bin Laden and should focus instead on withdrawing from the Gulf and ending its bias in the Middle East, the Taliban leader said September 24, 2001. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the hard-line Islamic movement ruling Afghanistan, said in a statement that Washington faced a 'vain and bloody war' if it did not change its Middle East policies. A protester holds a poster reading 'America, we are coming' during a rally in support of the Taliban and bin Laden in Karachi, Pakistan September 24, 2001. (Akbar Baloch/Reuters