Taliban warn of bloody spring as US takes NATO reins

KABUL, Feb 4 (Reuters) The Taliban promised a spring offensive of thousands of suicide bombers as the United States, doubling its combat troops in Afghanistan, took over command of the 33,000-strong NATO force in the country today.

As US General Dan McNeill took over the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO said the Taliban leader in a southern district was killed on Sunday as part of an offensive to recapture the key town of Musa Qala from the rebels.

The Taliban warns 2007 will be ''the bloodiest year for foreign troops'', saying they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready for an offensive when the winter snows melt in a few months.

''We have made 80 percent preparations to fight American and foreign forces and we are about to start war,'' Mullah Hayatullah Khan, a 35-year-old black-bearded guerrilla leader, told Reuters at a secret base in the east yesterday.

Khan says the 2,000 are just 40 per cent of fighters preparing to become suicide bombers, a tactic almost unheard of here until last year as militants copied Iraq.

''Now there is great enthusiasm for suicide attacks among the Taliban and these attacks will increase,'' he said.

Hours after the handover, a suicide bomber attacked a NATO convoy in Afghanistan's second city and birthplace of the Taliban, Kandahar, killing himself but no one else, police said.

Analysts say McNeill takes over ISAF at a pivotal time.

Last year was the bloodiest since US-led forces ousted the Taliban government in 2001. More than 4,000 people died, a quarter of them civilians and 170 foreign soldiers.

''The first 3-5 months of 2007 are absolutely crucial to the entire Afghan effort as the mission has been defined -- that is, in bringing security to the southern provinces,'' Sean Kay, a security expert and professor of international relations at the Ohio Wesleyan University, told Reuters.

From the beginning, he said, the United States did not put sufficient forces in Afghanistan in order to prevent a counter-insurgency from re-emerging.

'NOT ENOUGH SOLDIERS' ''NATO continues to suffer from this -- there are simply not enough troops to carry on a successful counter-insurgency campaign in the south. As the Taliban get further entrenched, the public there gets further drawn into their grip,'' he said.

Outgoing NATO commander, British General David Richards, saw his force grow from just 9,000 as it expanded into the Taliban's southern heartland during his nine-month command.

''2006 was a year of ISAF and ANSF (Afghan security forces) success and Taliban failure,'' he said, dressed in light brown desert camouflage fatigues and a black beret.

''The Taliban did not achieve a single objective.

''We have proved that NATO can and will defeat the Taliban militarily and, come the spring, an ISAF offensive -- not a Taliban offensive -- will set the conditions to defeat the insurgents again when, inevitably, their cynical leaders will launch young men against us to do their dirty business.'' The United States has effectively doubled its combat troops on the ground by extending the tours of duty for some soldiers by four months, which will also provide a rapid reaction force Richards long demanded but was never given.

President George W Bush is asking Congress for an extra 10.6 billion dollar over two years for the Afghan army and police, and Washington has been pressing its allies for more troops and an end to restrictions on how and where their soldiers can fight.

But so far, only Britain and Poland have committed more men and women and France is pulling its special forces out.

The Taliban seized Musa Qala in the opium-growing province of Helmand on Thursday night, four months after British troops withdrew following a peace deal with tribal leaders to keep the insurgents out, a deal criticised by the United States.

NATO forces launched an offensive to retake the town, killing the local Taliban chief in an air strike on Sunday.

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