By Shadi Khan Saif

KABUL, Afghanistan

The Taliban in Afghanistan Friday announced yet another year of fight to be named ‘Operation Mansouri’, after their second-slain leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour.

The armed rebels have been launching annual spring offensives since the U.S. forces toppled their regime in Kabul in 2001.

The Taliban’s latest announcement of yearly offensives comes exactly a week after they stormed a regional headquarters of the Afghan National Army (ANA) in the northern Balkh province, and killed up to 144 soldiers.

In a message posted on a militant website, they vowed to “defeat the invaders and its puppet regime”.

The brutal armed insurgency is currently headed by Mullah Hibatullah, who assumed charge in May last year after Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan while apparently returning from Iran.

Accusing the U.S. for heading an alliance of countries fighting and insisting upon war in Afghanistan, the Taliban statement asserted that U.S. would be defeated just like the former Soviet Union.

“The invading enemy has faced defeat on the war front, and as per the confession of the enemy more than half of the territory in the country is under the control of the Mujahedeen [Taliban]”, the statement read.

The U.S.’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) estimates the insurgents control 9 districts and have influence in 32, while 133 districts are “contested” out of a total of 398 districts. As for the government of Afghanistan, the SIGAR estimates that it controls only 83 districts and has influence over 150 districts.

Subsequently, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has blamed the insurgents of 62 percent of civilian casualties -- 1,353 (447 dead and 906 injured)-- in the first three months of 2017 alone.