We’ll be back, Taliban promise

Associated Press

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Two former high-ranking Taliban members talk of reorganizing their militant religious movement and describe a recovering al-Qaida — all while they sit secretly inside Pakistan, Washington’s front-line ally in the war on international terrorism.

In an interview with The Associated Press, they said the Afghan-Pakistan border can’t be sealed to stop the movement of militants. Even more advantageous, they said, is the split within Pakistan’s powerful spy agency between those who share the Taliban’s ideology and those who support Pakistan’s alliance with America.

One of the two, Fazul Rabi Said-Rahman, was the Taliban army corps commander for eastern Afghanistan. During the last six months of Taliban rule he was chief of police in Paktika province, an area still considered by the U.S.-led anti-terrorist coalition to be harboring fugitive Taliban and al-Qaida fighters.

The other man, Obeidullah, was an assistant to the Taliban’s intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, who was killed by a U.S. bomb in January in eastern Afghanistan.

Speaking in Pashtu through an interpreter, they said the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, are both alive, but offered no specifics on the Saudi dissident who leads al-Qaida. They said that they had met with Omar within the last two months "in the mountains in Afghanistan."

They did not claim to have seen bin Laden or explain how they knew he was alive. "He is waiting for the next big attack and then he will show his body," Obeidullah said.

Both men warned of suicide attacks on the United States and Britain in retaliation for the war in Afghanistan, but again offered no specifics.

In an earlier meeting with AP, Obeidullah had made a similar vague warning about a suicide attack. He said at the second meeting that he was speaking of the May 8 bus bombing in Karachi that killed 14 people, including 11 French engineers who were in Pakistan to build an Agosta submarine for the Pakistani navy.

"Before the Karachi attack I said something was being planned, something would happen in Pakistan," Obeidullah said. He said the attack was staged by al-Qaida and Pakistanis opposed to President Pervez Musharraf’s support for the United States.

Said-Rahman said some Pakistani groups are working with al-Qaida against the coalition and against Musharraf.

"Everyone is working together — Harakat-ul Jihad, Harakat-ul Mujahedeen, al-Qaida," he said, referring to two Pakistani-based Islamic extremist groups that have been outlawed by Musharraf. "People are angry with Musharraf because he is allowing the kafirs (non-Muslims) to destroy everything in Afghanistan. Muslims everywhere are angry."

In recent days, reports have surfaced in the United States about possible targets of terrorist attacks.

Said-Rahman said the reports were true, but wouldn’t elaborate or say where he got his information.

"We have information that there will be some big suicide attacks in the United States," he said. "We know it will happen. We have information. We know the situation. The Americans and the British are the big enemies. They have destroyed Afghanistan."