PESHAWAR, Nov 8: The chief of a Taliban militia said Thursday he was preparing to defect, with 18 commanders and 1,600 men, to the US-backed opposition Northern Alliance.

The man, who refused to be identified, said he had come to Peshawar from an eastern area of Afghanistan to consult with anti-Taliban commanders in exile and prepare a revolt against the ruling Taliban regime.

He said he had met here Wednesday night with a former Mujahideen commander from the Soviet occupation era and discussed his plans to return to Afghanistan to launch an anti-Taliban rebellion in concert with Peshawar-based opposition groups.

The commander said his tribe had decided to side with the Taliban in 1996.

“It was not an individual decision, it was a collective decision of the whole tribe,” he said, adding that he had stayed out of the factional fighting that engulfed Afghanistan after the 1989 Soviet pullout.—AFP