army believes Afghanistan provides strategic depth against India, which is their obsession." In 2007, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf admitted Taliban getting cross-border aid and said that "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil. The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side." Pakistan's Interior minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad on 1 September 2021, said in an interview with Hum News that "All top Taliban leaders were born and brought up in Pakistan. This has been our 'service' that we trained them and many more might be studying." Russia and Iran Dr. Antonio Giustozzi, a senior research fellow at Royal United Services Institute on terrorism and conflict, wrote, "Both the Russians and the Iranians helped the Taliban advance at a breakneck pace in May–August 2021. They contributed to funding and equipping them, but perhaps even more importantly they helped them by brokering deals with parties, groups and personalities close to either country, or even both. [...] The Revolutionary Guards helped the Taliban's advance in western Afghanistan, including by lobbying various strongmen and militia commanders linked to Iran not to resist the Taliban." 2001–2006 Taliban insurgency re-grouping period Following the Battle of Tora Bora and Operation Anaconda, the Taliban was defeated and many Taliban fighters left the movement or retreated to sanctuaries in Pakistan, where they began the initial stages of re-grouping. Pamphlets by Taliban and other groups turned up strewn in towns and the countryside in early 2003, urging Islamic faithful to rise up against US forces and other foreign soldiers in holy war. On 27 January 2003, during Operation Mongoose (War in Afghanistan), a band of fighters were assaulted by US forces at the Adi Ghar cave complex north of Spin Boldak. Eighteen rebels were reported killed with no US casualties. The site was suspected to be a base for supplies and fighters coming from Pakistan. The first isolated attacks by relatively large Taliban bands on Afghan targets also appeared around that time. In May 2003, the Taliban Supreme Court's chief justice, Abdul Salam, proclaimed that the Taliban were back, regrouped, rearmed, and ready for guerrilla war to expel US forces from Afghanistan. Omar assigned five operational zones to Taliban commanders such as Dadullah, who took charge in Zabul province. Small mobile Taliban training camps were established along the border to train recruits in guerrilla warfare, according to senior Taliban