The Taliban has claimed its forces last year killed 5220 Nato troops, shot down 31 aircraft, destroyed 2818 Nato and Afghan vehicles and killed 7552 Afghan soldiers and police.
THE Taliban has claimed its forces last year killed 5220 Nato troops, shot down 31 aircraft, destroyed 2818 Nato and Afghan vehicles and killed 7552 Afghan soldiers and police.
The Taliban's death toll claim is almost 20 times higher than official troop deaths announced by Nato member countries last year, which stood at 286 deaths including 151 American and 51 British troops.
Despite the inflated toll, the Taliban has had more success recently. Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and Taliban militants now control swaths of countryside. In response, the US is planning to pour up to 30,000 more troops into the country this year.
"They put out this propaganda in order to raise capital to continue their operations," said Colonel Jerry O'Hara, a US military spokesman.
Vahid Mojdeh, the author of a book on the Taliban, said the exaggerated claims help the insurgents recruit new fighters. "The Taliban needs volunteers to carry out suicide attacks, so they want to show they are killing a lot of people," he said.
Propaganda has long been a key element in war, particularly in conflicts where the sides are fighting to win support from the population.
The Taliban exaggerates Nato deaths in order to persuade average Afghans that the insurgents are winning, while Nato spokesmen frequently highlight construction projects - roads and schools - to Afghan journalists in the hopes that average Afghans will associate foreign troops with increased development.
Nato rarely releases militant death tolls from battles, and military spokesmen often say that it doesn't matter how many militants its forces kill, only that the Afghan government continues to develop.
But the separate US coalition, which is responsible for about 15,000 of the 65,000 foreign troops in the country, releases militant tolls more frequently, leaving the US open to charges of exaggeration. The US relies on reports from battlefield commanders and sometimes uses sophisticated equipment such as thermal radar that can sense the body heat put off by militants - or other people - no longer moving on a battlefield.
Mr Mojdeh said that while he is sure the Taliban exaggerates its numbers, "I don't know how we can trust the numbers of the Americans".
