Posted by: mcq on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Good grief. Afghanistan has its own set of problems, that's for sure. But a competent enemy doesn't seem to be one of them at the moment: Two battles killed more than 165 Taliban fighters and a U.S.-led coalition soldier in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday as President Hamid Karzai prepared to discuss the escalating violence with President Bush in New York.I bring this up because of a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with one of our generals in Afghanistan who said that the level of competence among the Taliban had been severely degraded by the constant pressure both coalition and Afghan troops had kept on the Taliban. You remember the Taliban's promised spring offensive that never materialized? That's because CF and the Afghan army went after them all winter, something that they're not at all used to or prepared for. Consequently when spring rolled around, they were in no shape to mount a patrol, much less an offensive. But they keep trying and the results are consistently bad in terms of kill ratios. In neighboring Uruzgan province, more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol from bunkers near the village of Kakrak in a six-hour battle Tuesday night, the coalition said.The Taliban haven't yet accepted they're no match for CF/Afghan forces in set-piece battles. They don't have the firepower or flexibility to succeed. And, from all the reports I hear, the Afghan army has become a pretty good army (but it suffers from some of the same problems that the Iraqi army suffers from, i.e. sustainment -logistics- problems). The general I mentioned said that in the south, where he was, most attacks are concentrated against the police and not the CF or Army who the Taliban mostly avoid (except, obviously, when they think they have the numerical advantage as in the two recent battles cited - and you can see the result even then). I have to wonder when the Taliban will shift to the tactics of the Iraqi insurgency. To me it seems inevitable and we see the importation of some of those tactics even now (IEDs, etc). However they seem to stubbornly resist that at the moment and are paying for their overconfidence with huge losses in conventional battles. I'm sure the CF/Afghan forces hope they continue to mount their campaigns exactly as they have recently. With victories like the two described their level of competence can only become worse, not better, and that's a plus for our side. |
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