|
Taliban suicide bombings seen as self-defeating
A new study has concluded that the Taliban will continue to employ suicide bombings in the upcoming year as a disruptive shock tactic, with the main victims being the very people the Taliban are trying to win over. The study by Dr Brian Glyn Williams and Cathy Young at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, which is published by the Jamestown Foundations Terrorism Monitor, says as coalition troops continue to use close air support and superior artillery firepower to flush Taliban insurgents out of provinces like Kandahar, the real contest for the hearts and minds of the local population for 2007 may well hinge on the competing sides collateral damage statistics. The study covers 158 suicide bombings from 2001 to 2007 in Afghanistan, including the one during Vice President Dick Cheneys visit to the Bagram base. It notes that US military and government sources have routinely spoken of the Iraqification of the Afghan conflict. Recent statistics from US and Afghan agencies seem to support this claim. While Afghanistan had 25 suicide bombings in 2005, in 2006 it experienced as many as 139 suicide attacks. It appears that the carnage that has shredded the fabric of Iraqi society has come to the so-called Forgotten War in Afghanistan. The study takes the view that despite the mounting evidence that the Iraqi invasion has destabilised Afghanistan via the sharing of Iraqi tactics with Afghan insurgents, the suicide bombing campaign in Afghanistan has its own specific dynamics. It is the little noticed local characteristics that distinguish suicide bombing in Afghanistan from that in the Iraqi there. An analysis of the Talibans 2007 suicide campaign makes some of these differences glaringly obvious. This years statistics seem to support the notion that suicide bombers are ramping up their attacks in an effort to cause as much Iraqi-style carnage as possible. While it is only seven weeks into the new year, there already have been 21 suicide bombings or attempts in Afghanistan. Posted by: Fred 2007-03-01 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=181819 |