A Taliban field commander in southern Zabul province, Mullah Jamal Khan, told The Daily Beast by cell phone that when he heard the news of Obama’s speech on Thursday morning he immediately went to a nearby mosque and offered “a special prayer of thanks to God.” “My soul, and the souls of thousands of Taliban who have been blown up, are happy,” he says. “I had more than 50 encounters with U.S. forces and their technology,” he adds. “But the biggest difference in ending this war was not technology but the more powerful Islamic ideology and religion.”
Some Taliban are talking as if they’ve already won. “I hold my head high, being part of the force that has defeated the worst enemies of Islam,” says Mullah Yasseen, a 30-year-old fighter in Zabul province. “Our victory has already been written in history,” says the subcommander of a unit of ten southern fighters. Now, he adds, there is no room for any compromise or negotiations: “We would not join any secular regime, nor will we talk to or share power with [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai. We want sharia law, and we will fight to the end to get it.” An official Taliban statement on its website today in reply to Obama’s speech was equally uncompromising. It reads: “The solution for the Afghan crisis lies in the full withdrawal of all foreign troops immediately and until this happen[s] our armed struggle will increase from day to day.”
Afghans who oppose the Taliban are worried. They wonder if their own security forces will be able to keep the insurgents at bay as the America winds down its troop commitment.
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