Afghanistan regroups for Taliban offensive

By Terry Friel

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan and its allies were stretched to breaking point by last year's surprise Taliban resurgence but have spent the winter regrouping for a new guerrilla offensive, its defense minister said on Thursday.

Last year was the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's Islamist government in 2001 -- more than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, died in fighting.

Both sides warn this spring, after the snows melt in a few weeks, could be even bloodier.

"Last year, we were surprised. We were surprised by the amount of support which they were receiving, by the amount of their supplies, by their numbers," Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told Reuters at the sprawling military headquarters on the banks of the Kabul River.

"We were stretched ... to our limits during that fighting. But now we are much better prepared."

Wardak said last year's surge in violence, which saw the Taliban take on the U.S. and NATO in conventional pitched battles, had been aimed at scaring foreign countries into pulling troops out early.

"They thought that if they inflicted enough casualties it would influence the decision of some countries concerning the deployment of their forces," he said.

CONVENTIONAL GUERRILLA TACTICS

While inflicting heavy losses on NATO and U.S. forces last year -- almost 200 in combat or from other causes -- the Taliban also took a big hit, he said.

Fighting jumped dramatically as British-led NATO forces pushed into the Taliban's southern heartland for the first time.

Analysts say the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies will shift back to conventional guerrilla tactics this year, using roadside and suicide bombs, after losing badly on the battlefield.

Virtually unknown until 2005, when there were 21, suicide bomb attacks jumped to 139 last year and are expected to soar this year as the rebels copy tactics, drafting poor recruits from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Pakistan, Chechnya and beyond.

On Tuesday, 23 people including two Americans and a South Korean, died when a suicide car bomber attacked the main U.S. base in Afghanistan during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit.

Cheney was pressing Afghanistan and Pakistan to do more to seal the porous border that divides fiercely loyal Pashtun tribes.

The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready for action, plus more than that number again still in training.