Key anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Masood has raised a 20,000-strong army to combat the ruling militia, an opposition official said Saturday.
Masood's political aide Abdullah (eds: only one name) said the army had already conducted exercises in the northeastern parts of the country under their control.
"We are in a situation that shows the Taliban are willing to continue the fighting till the last with their belligerent designs," he told AFP from Paris. "We believe creation of this regular force would be useful."
He said the new uniformed force, mobilized in different units and divisions, had been raised from among the ex-servicemen of the groups battling the ruling Taliban.
Abdullah dismissed reports that the army was under the command of two ex-communist generals, Nabi Azimi and Asef Delawar, and that its creation had some links with former Afghan monarch Zaher Shah, who lives in Rome.
Azimi was a deputy defence minister and Delawar chief of army staff in the pro-Moscow regime. The communists helped Masood take power in 1992.
The ex-king who has lived in exile for around 30 years now, last year said he wanted to end the Taliban-Masood conflict by holding a traditional Loya Jirga (grand assembly) inside the country.
The hardline Islamic militia, which emerged in 1994 from Koranic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, control more that 90 per cent of the country.
They dealt severe blows to Masood last summer by capturing the provincial capital of Taloqan in Takhar, the second political-military bastion of the opposition after Panjshir valley to the north of the capital – KABUL (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
