In an interesting turn of events, a former army general of Afghanistan stated that he and many of his former colleagues are preparing to launch a new war against the Taliban.
Afghan politicians could also join them, Lt Gen Sami Sadat was quoted as saying by the BBC.
Sadat’s comments came eight months and a half after the Taliban takeover of the landlocked country.
The Taliban rule since August last year has convinced many Afghans that military action is the only way forward, he said.
On August 15, 2021, the Taliban ousted former President Ashraf Ghani's government and captured Kabul, without facing much resistance from the Afghan army.
For the Afghan army, holding everywhere against the Taliban was an impossible task.
Despite the billions of dollars of US-led military support, equipment and training, the army's capacity had been hollowed out by years of rampant corruption.
Senior officers creamed off what they could, stealing salaries from lower ranks, as well as selling fuel and ammunition supplies.
The situation worsened after Washington struck a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 for a troop withdrawal agreement.
Sadat said operations could begin next month after the Islamic Eid festival, when he plans to return to Afghanistan.
The army general said he and others would "do anything and everything in our powers to make sure Afghanistan is freed from the Taliban and a democratic system is re-established".
"Until we get our freedom, until we get our free will, we will continue to fight," he said, while refusing to be drawn on a specific timeline.
The general underscored how the Taliban had been reintroducing increasingly harsh rule - including severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls - and it was time to stop their authoritarian order and start a new chapter.
"What we see in Afghanistan in eight months of Taliban rule has been nothing but more religious restrictions, misquotation, misinterpretation and misuse of the scripts from the Holy Koran for political purposes."
He initially planned to give the Taliban 12 months to see if they would change, he said. "Unfortunately, every day you wake up the Taliban have had something new to do - torturing people, killing, disappearances, food shortages, child malnutrition."
He said he received hundreds of messages daily from Afghans asking him what he was going to do about it.
