Taliban

March 11, 2012 Special Dispatch No.4560 Taliban Commanders in Interviews: 'Jihad is a Religious Obligation On Us, We Have No Fixed Timeframe For It'; 'Jihadi Officials Have Been Recruited in All 15 Districts of Paktika in Accordance With the Rules... of the Islamic Emirate' Below are excerpts from recent interviews with two Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, which appeared in the Urdu-language jihadist magazine Nawa-i-Afghan Jihad. The date of the interviews is not clear, but they appear to have been conducted sometime in late 2011. The first interview is with Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, one of the two main spokesmen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban shadow government), and was published in the February 2012 issue of Nawa-i-Afghan Jihad. The second is with Maulvi Sangeen, Taliban shadow governor for Paktika province. The full text of this report is available to MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor Subscribers. Subscription information is available at this link. JTTM subscribers can visit this page to view the report.