The Taliban has marked the 25th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan by claiming US forces are fleeing the country in a similarly ignominious exit.
The final Soviet troops left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, after 10 years of bloody occupation followed by civil war and the emergence of the Islamist Taliban movement that took Kabul in 1996.
"Today America is facing the same fate as the former Soviet Union and is trying to escape from our country," the Taliban, who have fought a fierce insurgency since being ousted in 2001, said in an emailed statement on Saturday.
"We want to remind the Americans that as we did not accept invaders with their nice slogans in the past and we eliminated them from the world map."
The US-led NATO military mission is due to end this year, but negotiations between Kabul and Washington could mean about 10,000 US troops stay in Afghanistan after 2014 on training and counter-terrorism operations.
The deal to allow the residual US force has been the subject of months of bitter wrangling between President Hamid Karzai and US officials.
Karzai has ruled Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, surviving assassination attempts and the treacherous currents of Afghan political life as billions of dollars of military and development aid poured into the country.
He is barred from seeking a third term in office, leaving an open field to compete in elections in April.
Taliban insurgents have threatened to target the election campaign, and the Afghan police and army face a major challenge with little support from the dwindling number of foreign troops.
