As Obama hands Afghanistan commanders new orders, Mullah Omar warns of US defeat

As US president Barack Obama informed senior military chiefs in Afghanistan Monday, Nov. 30, they would receive another 30,000 US and 10,000 extra troops from eight NATO countries, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar tried to get the jump on him by warning that the US and its allies faced defeat.
Obama briefed UK, French, Russian and Italian leaders on his much-awaited new strategy for the Afghanistan conflict before unveiling it in a speech Tuesday. Indian intelligence sources report he is hiding in Karachi after Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence helped smuggle him out of his secret headquarters in Quetta, Baluchistan.
From his new hideout, Omar Mullah warned the White House:
“Considering the present facts in Afghanistan, you and your allies are facing inevitable defeat which will remain whether by sending more troops or taking a series of illogical strategies.” The Afghan Taliban leader went on to say: “And may you know that the logic of using force today has lost its effect, and you cannot control the Afghani people through monetary force or your satanic trickery.”
According to debkafile‘s military sources, the last sentence referred to US plans to pay out large monthly stipends to tribal and commanders in order to lure thousands of Taliban fighters into switching sides, a gambit which worked in Iraq for drawing Sunni Arab tribal chieftains into declaring war on al Qaeda.
US and Afghan sources report that, since last month when Congress appropriated $1.3 billion to fund this program, 8,000 fighting men have reneged from Taliban ranks and either joined the Kabul government’s armed forces or laid down their arms and stopped attacking American troops.
Our military sources estimate that this figure inflated or at least far from cut and dried. Some Taliban leaders may have accepted the stipends and, rather than retiring, used the money to rest, rearm and regroup for the next round of warfare. Some Afghans may have given out an encouraging figure because they kept some of the funds back in their own pockets.
Mullah Omar’s message started out by saying “Our mujahid people will not accept negotiations designed to grant legitimacy to the continued occupation of their country.” He stressed: “Afghanistan is our home and no one accepts negotiations for sharing their home and managing it…” to become “a slave for an oppressor.”
In the last fortnight, it has been rumored in Afghanistan and Pakistan that the US and the Afghan Taliban are indirectly negotiating indirectly an end to the conflict and the withdrawal of US and other NATO forces from the country through Saudi and Pakistani intermediaries.
There are now roughly 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 allied forces in Afghanistan.
Sunday, Nov. 29, US Republican Representative Mike Coffman, who returned from a visit to Afghanistan with a group of lawmakers, reported on a briefing they received from US-NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal:
“I asked him: ‘If you get these troops that you are requesting, the 40,000, where’s the tipping point? At what point will we begin to draw down?”
“McChrystal responded: ‘Sometime before 2013.’
Pentagon officials had no comment to make on this assertion.
This and other signs indicate to debkafile‘s military sources that the policy Obama is preparing to unveil is not geared to winning the Afghanistan war but ending the US military involvement from a position of strength, not weakness. Mullah Omar’s message on Monday shows that he appreciates the US president’s underlying purpose.