The Taliban has on Friday announced that it is launching a spring offensive, in a major setback to United States-led Afghan peace talks, with an aim of “cleansing Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption” and “eradicating occupation”.
According to Al-Jazeera news reports, the launch of spring offensive uses to mark the initiation of the so-called fighting period, symbolic as the Taliban continued battling the US and Afghan forces.
In an official statement, the Taliban said, “Operation Fath, which means victory in Arabic, will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of eradicating occupation and cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption.”
The announcement came despite the effort of the United States to put an end to the 17-year-old Afghan war, in fact, Washington has held several rounds of Afghan peace talks with the Taliban leadership in Doha, the capital Qatar.
The Taliban said it shows “the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force”. The Taliban has called the police, Afghan army and several pro-government fighters to join them. “Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended,” the Taliban said.
The Afghanistan ministry of defence spokesperson Qais Mangal said, “The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years.”
The government, however, called the Taliban’s launching of spring offensive as “mere propaganda”.