Taliban commander threatens Germany

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, May 23 (UPI) -- A leading Taliban official has threatened to launch an increasing number of terrorist attacks against German soldiers in Afghanistan.

"The Germans are our most important enemy in the North, and because of their presence in Kuduz, this city will soon become the Kandahar of the North," Qari Bashir Haqqani, a Taliban military commander, said in an interview with the online version of German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. "It's important to fight and kill the Germans in Kunduz."

In the interview, the 40-year-old Haqqani said he was commanding some 500 Taliban around Kunduz, the province the German Bundeswehr soldiers are tasked with overseeing.

Germany has roughly 3,000 soldiers stationed in the northern province who are providing security and reconstruction.

Haqqani said the aim of the Taliban was to retake Kunduz and, eventually, the entire country.

"The Germans will have to shoulder many more caskets with the bodies of German soldiers, if they don't realize that they have to pull out their troops," he said. "We are prepared for some decades of war, but we expect the West to leave Afghanistan starting in 2010, when a lot of nations will pull out their troops."