Flush with success, Taliban swarming all around Kandahar

[Darth Wong]

Remember the prison break that was supposedly of no strategic import? The one discussed in this thread?

Taliban swarm edges of Kandahar

ALEXANDER PANETTA
The Canadian Press
June 16, 2008 at 4:24 PM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters stormed onto the doorstep of Afghanistan's second-largest city Monday, claiming control of villages, bombing small bridges, and scattering landmines to keep Canadian and international troops at bay.

The head of the Kandahar provincial council and brother of President Hamid Karzai said the rebels had seized a handful of villages and were rumoured to be seeking a bigger target: Kandahar city.

Canadian soldiers are playing a major role in the multinational push to keep the Taliban from advancing and are accompanied by the Afghan army and U.S. special forces, said Ahmed Wali Karzai.

But their path was blocked by bombed-out culverts and land mines planted by the rebels, he added.

Mr. Karzai said the Taliban had nabbed control of several villages in the lush Arghandab river valley – just next door to Kandahar city, the birthplace of the Taliban.

“They have taken over there,” Mr. Karzai told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview Monday.

“There are also strong rumours that they will attack Kandahar city at strategic points – my house, the government's house, the police station.”

For now they have set up position in small villages across the Arghandab River just west of the city, which is home to the international base where most of Canada's 2,500 troops are stationed.

Mr. Karzai said police had been sent in from the capital to help local forces protect the volatile region: “Everyone in Kabul is very much concerned.”

However, he downplayed the threat of an attack on Kandahar city.

He said the Taliban have in the past grabbed Arghandab villages only to lose them, and similar rumours about an attack on Kandahar have circulated before.

But the concern was palpable Monday even inside the NATO security bubble.

Some employees of the international troops refused to leave their homes Monday out of concern for their safety and did not come into work. One Canadian soldier bluntly assessed the situation:

“Shit's hitting the fan,” he said. “They want to take the city. They want to make a statement.”

Mr. Karzai said it was unclear if the Taliban commanders responsible for the raid on Arghandab were some of the escaped inmates who fled from Sarposa prison in last week's explosive raid.

Mohammad Farooq, the government leader in the Arghandab, said around 500 Taliban fighters had moved into his district and taken over several villages.

A tribal leader from the region warned that the militants could use the cover from Arghandab's grape and pomegranate orchards to mount an attack on the provincial capital itself.

“All of Arghandab is made of orchards. The militants can easily hide and easily fight,” said Haji Ikramullah Khan.

NATO General Carlos Branco said international troops were being redeployed within the region. But he confidently dismissed the notion that Kandahar city could be attacked.

“No doubt about that,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview. He also downplayed suggestions that the Taliban had seized control of vast swaths of the district next door.

“At this stage, Arghandab is not on the brink of being conquered by the Taliban,” Gen. Branco said.

Two powerful anti-Taliban leaders from Arghandab have died in the last year, weakening the region's defences.

Mullah Naqib, the district's former leader, died of a heart attack last year. Taliban fighters moved into Arghandab en masse last October, two weeks after his death, but left within days after hundreds of security forces were deployed there.

A second leader, police commander Abdul Hakim Jan, died in a massive suicide bombing in Kandahar in February that killed more than 100 people.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 35 insurgents in two skirmishes in the south, the coalition said Monday.

Twenty rebels were killed in Zabul province after they attacked a combined patrol with rockets, mortars and gunfire. The combined forces returned fire and called in air strikes in Sunday's battle.

Fifteen insurgents were reportedly killed in the Sangin area of Helmand province Saturday after a group of men in a treeline fired on Afghan and coalition troops. Two hours of fighting ensued, and military aircraft were again called in.

More than 1,900 people have died in insurgent violence in Afghanistan this year, according to Afghan and western officials.

Oh yeah, things are just peachy in Afghanistan, aren't they?

[Lusankya]

Clearly there is only one possible response to this undesirable turn of events: We must distract the public by attacking Iran!

[K. A. Pital]

I seriously wonder how long would Karzai's narcobaron "government" last if foreign troops left Afghanistan right now like the Soviet troops did. Probably not even half as long as Najibullah did.

[Adrian Laguna]

I would deal with such a situation by trying to use the Taliban's new found confidence against them. They could be lured into conventional engagements by baiting them with weak forces, and then crushed with air strikes or an armoured force kept in reserve. The bait would likely take considerable casualties, however. It might be possible to use strategic points, such as villages, as bait instead, by feigning an inability to cover them, but before doing it one better be dammed sure that collateral damage would be blamed on the Taliban, not the Coalition.

[K. A. Pital]

I would deal with such a situation by trying to use the Taliban's new found confidence against them.

All CI operations usually follow that strategy. You already listed the reasons why it doesn't work so well.

[weemadando]

And Britain just boosted it's troop numbers to the highest since the invasion of Afghanistan.

Yup.

Afghanistan is going just brilliantly.

[MKSheppard]

I guess it's time for another round of whack-a-mole with the Taliban forces through heavy artillery and airstrikes.

I wonder if the dutch still have their PzH 2000s there?

[K. A. Pital]

I guess it's time for another round of whack-a-mole with the Taliban forces through heavy artillery and airstrikes.

So you're going to art-bomb Kandahar? Oh noes you act like the brutal drunk Ruskie guys who did bad things to Rambo!

[weemadando]

I'm just wondering what the international reaction will be if the Taliban pull off a major offensive like this and actually can push into Kandahar successfully.

What happens if the news breaks that the coalition has lost a city to what would effectively be a military action, rather than just an escalated insurgency as was the case in Fallujah etc in Iraq.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Taliban's Tet Offensive?

[The Grim Squeaker]

Taliban's Tet Offensive?

The Viet-Kong suffered massive, crippling casualties after/during the Tet offensive actually, precisely due to them getting butchered by conventional military firepower.
By then however, it didn't matter since the US was withdrawing anyway.

[hongi]

You've got to give credit to the Taliban. They've been massively reduced by an international coalition, through seven years of fighting, and they still refuse to capitulate. The incredibly difficult terrain, the constant reinforcing from remote Pakistani areas and the narco-dollars doen't help.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Taliban's Tet Offensive?

The Viet-Kong suffered massive, crippling casualties after/during the Tet offensive actually, precisely due to them getting butchered by conventional military firepower.
By then however, it didn't matter since the US was withdrawing anyway.

They won the propaganda war with that battle though. For years, as is the case now in Afghanistan the US had been saying "rarar we are winning" and then BAM, massive daring military operations by the enemy.

[bobalot]

I think western nations have collectively lost our balls. We truly believe that wars can be won with high tech gizmos and relatively few forces on the ground (compared to the occupied area and population). If they really want to win, they got to bite the bullet and put more troops on the ground.

Problem with that approach is that causalities would go up. If the rationale for war is not strong, people at home would start getting restless.

The Taliban are a very unpopular group in Afghanistan. They are not like the Viet Cong who had significant support from the population during the Vietnam war. They are a bunch of crazy bastards who dominated with foreign fighters and money. Losing ground to them would really be a military disaster.

[Vympel]

*insert my patented, smarmy recount of arrogant triumphalism about achieving what the British Empire & Soviet Union couldn't here*

[Chris OFarrell]

Well to be fair, the nations who went in THIS time into Afghanistan actually had a good chance, given the manpower, resources and money they COULD have poured into the whole thing, compared to what the Brits or USSR did.

The fact that Shrub had no clue about any of this really isn't the troops fault


On topic, if the Taliban are stupid enough to try to fight a set piece battle with heavy NATO forces, with massive fire support to play with in open terrain, well...

[Master of Ossus]

They won the propaganda war with that battle though. For years, as is the case now in Afghanistan the US had been saying "rarar we are winning" and then BAM, massive daring military operations by the enemy.

But the Taliban would not win the "propaganda war" by taking Kandahar. Indeed, the international community would just come down on them even harder.

[Solauren]

Hmmm...

Wouldn't the international community coming down on the Taliban harder, with more troop reinforcements, cause more foreign troops to enter to help fight the infidels / invaders?

This has the potiental, if not doubt with, of becoming a political nightmare.

[TheMuffinKing]

Hmmm...

Wouldn't the international community coming down on the Taliban harder, with more troop reinforcements, cause more foreign troops to enter to help fight the infidels / invaders?

This has the potiental, if not doubt with, of becoming a political nightmare.

The very real potential is there. Better monitoring of the Pakistani border would curtail much of the foreign fighters entering the country and ease the burden of those fighting taliban forces already there. From what I've read, Pakistan's tribal region is the primary source of foreign fighters and controlling/neutralizing it would be to everyone's benefit.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I guess it's time for another round of whack-a-mole with the Taliban forces through heavy artillery and airstrikes.

So you're going to art-bomb Kandahar? Oh noes you act like the brutal drunk Ruskie guys who did bad things to Rambo!

I thought it was the Vietnamese and Cambodians that got to Rambo.

[Master of Ossus]

Hmmm...

Wouldn't the international community coming down on the Taliban harder, with more troop reinforcements, cause more foreign troops to enter to help fight the infidels / invaders?

This has the potiental, if not doubt with, of becoming a political nightmare.

If I understand your comment correctly, you're suggesting that more foreign insurgents will come fight the Coalition forces if they defeat the insurgents around Kandahar? Personally, I find that completely incredible. Not only do people respond to victories more than defeats in deciding when to show up to fight, but it's not like the insurgents in Afghanistan tailor their activity levels to Coalition activity levels. The whole point of a guerrilla campaign is that the guerrillas try to be active when and where the opposing armies are not.

[Darth Wong]

The Taliban will appear to be challenging coalition forces to a conventional battle, but when those forces actually take up the challenge, they will break almost immediately and melt into the countryside. It's not as if they haven't done that before.

Frankly, it's just wet-dream fantasy nonsense to believe the Taliban would actually pour most of their human resources into an army and then commit that army to a set-piece battle, so that it could be wiped out once and for all.

[weemadando]

The Taliban will appear to be challenging coalition forces to a conventional battle, but when those forces actually take up the challenge, they will break almost immediately and melt into the countryside. It's not as if they haven't done that before.

Frankly, it's just wet-dream fantasy nonsense to believe the Taliban would actually pour most of their human resources into an army and then commit that army to a set-piece battle, so that it could be wiped out once and for all.

I can't see them committing to set piece, but I can see them taking portions of Kandahar, even if just for a day and then melting away before the brunt of the coalition power can be brought to bear.

Even that would be more than enough to stop a lot of the cooperation with the coalition forces due to the fear of the ever-growing Taliban power. Hell, just threatening Kandahar and operating openly that close to the city is bad enough.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Taliban has stood up, fought and died in quite a number of battalion sized actions in the past, and that’s not counting the much larger battles early in the war during the invasion. It’s useful for them to do this for time to time even if they suffer significant manpower losses in the process, because it discourages western troops from dispersing into small units that could actually sweep the countryside with some level of effectiveness. Also, and I suspect this is part of there strategy at the moment, by taking villages, even worthless ones the coalition never sent forces into before, they force a response, and that response inevitably inflicts heavy collateral damage and kills lots of civilians, all to the gain of the Taliban. Its simply human nature to be missed pissed off at damage caused by foreigners then by your own countrymen.

[MKSheppard]

That didn't take long.

Link

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan and NATO forces using air power cleared Taliban militants from villages near the strategic city of Kandahar, killing at least 56 Islamist insurgents, officials said Thursday.

Troops were now making a final search of houses in Arghandab district, a day after around 1,000 soldiers launched a huge offensive against the rebels, said the defence ministry and the NATO-led International Security Assistance force.

A NATO spokesmen said the "highly successful" operation involving air strikes would help allay concerns about the force's capabilities after hundreds of militants escaped from Kandahar's main jail at the weekend.

Taliban spokesmen had said some of the fugitives from the prison were among those who took up defensive positions in Arghandab's dense pomegranate groves and vineyards from Monday evening.

"Arghandab district is totally cleared of the enemy presence," defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said at a joint press conference in Kabul with NATO officials.

Fifty-six "enemies" were killed, mostly foreigners, while a number of others were wounded, Azimi added, in a likely reference to militants crossing from neighbouring Pakistan.

A civilian and two Afghan troops also died, he said.

Kandahar provincial governor Asadullah Khaled said earlier that hundreds of Taliban were killed or wounded during the offensive and also confirmed that the district had been cleared.

NATO civilian spokesman Mark Laity said the operation, which was led by Afghan forces and involved Canadian troops, was an effective response to Friday's jailbreak in Kandahar.

"Nobody is complacent, but so far it been highly successful," Laity told reporters.

"After the recent incident, the jailbreak, there was concern about our capabilities. This was a fast and very effective response, I think something that all Afghans can take great heart from," Laity added.

The joint forces were now "in the closing stage of the operation," codenamed Operation Doar Bukhou, or Turn Around, ISAF military spokesman General Carlos Branco told the same news conference.

He accused the Taliban of lying about their numbers in the district, adding: "The insurgents were there, but they do not have the numbers or the foothold that they have claimed."

The Taliban's build-up in Arghandab posed a fresh challenge to President Hamid Karzai as he seeks to tackle the bloodiest phase of an insurgency launched after the hardline movement was toppled in 2001.

The rebels viewed the district as a strategic stepping stone towards their goal of retaking Kandahar, the city where the movement rose to power in 1996.

The Taliban said in a statement on their website that a group of "martyrdom attackers" had entered Kandahar city to target Canadian and Afghan soldiers and Afghan officials, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

With nearly 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, Karzai has come under growing pressure from his Western allies to improve security, but the Afghan leader has faced a series of setbacks including Friday's mass prison breakout.

Karzai responded by threatening to launch attacks on militants on Pakistani soil, sparking a war of words with Islamabad.

In the Pakistani border town of Chaman on Thursday, hundreds of people chanting "Death to Karzai" burned an effigy of the Afghan leader in protest at his comments, an AFP reporter witnessed.

The Arghandab operation began as the deaths of the six NATO soldiers were announced elsewhere in Afghanistan. Four were British, including the nation's first female casualty in Afghanistan, in the southern province of Helmand.