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60 percent of Taliban in Afghanistan ‘foreigners’

* Taliban commander says they must hide among Afghan civilians

HERAT: Taliban fighters have no choice but to hide among civilians while they fight foreign troops in Afghanistan, and accept that members of their family may become victims of their holy war, a Taliban commander said on Sunday.

Mullah Mahmoud, a Taliban commander in the Golestan district of Afghanistan’s Farah province, which borders Iran, also said most Taliban fighters in Afghanistan were foreigners. He said 60 percent were from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s Punjab province and other countries.

US and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan have accused Taliban insurgents of hiding in Afghan homes in a deliberate attempt to increase the number of civilian casualties caused by air strikes by foreign forces.

“When the Taliban are part of a community and live amongst the people, when the Americans arrive, they have to go the house where their brother is, where their family is ... so when [the Americans] come to our house to kill us, they will kill our families too,” Mahmoud told Reuters in a telephone interview.

A teacher during the time of the Taliban government, Mahmoud said he joined the austere Sunni movement six years ago.

“I was a teacher, I worked. During the Taliban [government], they even shot me in the shoulder but after the Afghan government was installed I was compelled to join the Taliban because of its treatment of the people,” he said. reuters

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