Abdul the Taliban, on the hunt for American 'infidels'

KABUL (AFP) — Abdul Shafiq is around 30 years old and has sacrificed his family life for two things: reading the Koran and fighting.

After years in exile following the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, this Taliban commander is back in the mountains of his birth, having left behind his old life with his family for one mission: chasing out the "infidel" Americans.

It takes several cups of tea in a house next to a snowy hill, somewhere in southern Kabul, before the fighter with a thin face and the features of a Pashtun from southern Afghanistan, agrees to tell his story.

Abdul Shafiq -- an assumed name -- looks like any other Afghan, except that he has never been as unhappy as in times of peace.

He wears a long cream shirt and leather jacket; his hair and beard are thick and black, his clear brown eyes sparkle as brightly as his silver Pashtun cap dotted with shiny plastic beads.

In hiding in Kabul, he rarely spends two nights in the same place, taking a break before returning to the fight.

In the mountains, he heard of new US President Barack Obama "who will change nothing" and of Palestine "where something is happening".

His future seems set: "As long as the Americans are here, we will fight them," says the Taliban militant, whom AFP could only meet through local intermediaries.

This year should be a challenging one for Shafiq: up to 30,000 new US troops are expected in Afghanistan under a major new strategy led by Obama, with several thousand headed to Shafiq's home province.

Born and raised in Wardak, adjacent to Kabul, he entered an Islamic school aged 13 for several years of instruction under teachers he remembers as Arabs with a strict interpretation of religion.

In 1994 he joined the Taliban as they prepared to march on Kabul at a time when the country was engulfed in civil war between former anti-Soviet factions, the mujahideen (holy fighters).

When the extreme Islamist group finally won control of the capital in 1996, "everyone was happy to see the Taliban -- good Muslims -- put an end to the killing, the rape and the theft of the mujahideen," Shafiq says.

Then aged 18 and with some education, on top of his two years' service with the Taliban, he could have taken a job with the new administration.

But Shafiq preferred to continue fighting, traveling to the north to take on the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, a bitter enemy of the Taliban. "Some good fighters. We respected them," he recalls.

It was in the northern mountains that he heard, over Taliban combat radio, on September 11, 2001 that planes sent by Al-Qaeda, had struck at the heart of the United States.

"That was beautiful, delicious to hear, everyone was happy," the warrior says with a smile.

But when the United States invaded Afghanistan the following month, Shafiq and his comrades soon realized they could not withstand the deluge of US bombs and fled. Some went to Pakistan. Others, like Shafiq, went west to Iran.

The Iranian government and the Taliban may have little in common, but they shared virulent opposition to the United States.

Iran took in Taliban in their thousands, according to Shafiq. He stayed there for four years, without guns and without combat. He was despondent.

"I didn't want to do anything," the fighter remembers.

"Anyway, I didn't know how to do anything except fight. We read the Koran but life wasn't that interesting."

At the start of 2006, Afghanistan elected a new parliament. In Kabul, the US army, sure of itself, branded the Taliban finished.

It was then that Shafiq slipped quietly home to Wardak. "They told us that the Americans were stopping the Taliban much less," he says.

He took charge of a group of 30 men who lived on the move, going from one safehouse to another, he says.

Even before then, the Taliban started to regroup. "Everything is structured. The orders come from our leaders in Pakistan," Shafiq says. He is less forthcoming about how they obtained weapons and money.

In villages crowded with unemployed men tired of US bombings and disappointed by international aid that never arrived, Taliban rhetoric slamming the American "invaders" who "plunder Muslim soil" won some support.

Others fell in with insurgents to enrich destitute lives with stolen goods gained from ambushes targeting trade convoys.

Whether "old" or "new" Taliban, many take liberties with the Islamic dogma of war which bans kidnapping for ransom or taking civilians prisoner.

Claiming to be a fighter for Islam above all, Shafiq hardly ever sees his wife and three children, under five. He condemns television as "against Islam" and has never used the Internet.

When it comes to the war, he calls suicide attacks a "good weapon" and says they should avoid harming civilians -- which they almost most never do.