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Washington, Oct. 31. (PTI): Pakistan's ISI continues to supply the Taliban with weapons and other goods even though President Pervez Musharraf has replaced the agency's chief, the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington has said.
ISI is still supplying weapons to the militia, Haron Amin told The Washington Times.
Urging the US to ignore pleas for a pause in the fighting during Ramzan, Amin said ``the Taliban has always violated the sanctity of the holy month of Ramzan with massacres and ethnic cleansings.'' In 1998, during Ramzan, they drove 150,000 people from their homes in ethnic cleansing of the Shomali plain north of Kabul. Ramzan is for fasting, not a month to stop fighting terrorism,'' Amin said.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal quoting US officials said strategists have come to the conclusion that it will take a strong force of US ground troops to beat the Taliban.
The US now has a ground presence with the Northern Alliance, but much stronger forces will be needed if an impression is to be made on the Taliban, US officials told the journal. For now, the US plans to rely on the Northern Alliance to advance on Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif with the help of air strikes.
US officials hope a series of victories
in the north would rattle the Taliban and begin to whittle away support
for the ruling militia among Pushtuns in the south and east of the country.
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