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British troops have switched tactics to fight Taliban
 (KUNA) -- British forces in Afghanistan have switched tactics to counter a new wave of Taliban bombings and suicide attacks, a senior British commander said here Tuesday. The UK Chief of Joint Operations Lieutenant General Nick Houghton said that they were now deliberately targeting key Taliban leaders in an attempt to drive a wedge between them and ordinary Afghans. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee, he acknowledged that attempts at the wholesale "eradication" of the Taliban and their supporters would simply alienate the local population.
General Houghton said the Taliban appeared to have abandoned their tactics of last summer when they suffered heavy casualties mounting mass attacks on heavily-defended British positions. "Increasingly, the switch this year has been towards the Taliban not taking on this tactic of mass attack but adopting a more asymmetric approach, the utilisation of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), suicide bombers, that sort of thing," he told the Committee. What we are attempting to do is use a far more intelligence-focused approach to the elimination of key Taliban leaders. We recognise that the (wholesale) eradication of the Taliban is not a sensible option. That alienates the public, locally and internationally." "Therefore to attempt to dislocate the key Taliban leadership and attempt to drive a wedge between the irreconcilable, tier one Taliban leadership and the local potential Taliban fighters, that is the nature of the tactic we are following," the UK Chief of Joint Operations added. Browne said the Taliban may have been forced to change tactics because they were suffering too many casualties. "It may be that they made a great error and have suffered a level of casualty which they cannot sustain long-term," he told the Committee. He said that the new British tactics were designed to send "a very clear message to the people who do the fighting in the numbers that their leadership is not invulnerable and is capable of being arrested or killed by us." Browne signalled that he was preparing to send more helicopters. "I do believe that we need more helicopters. I want the option to provide more to operations to increase the flexibility commanders have. I have no doubt that if I can get them more they will find good ways of using them. I will probably have more to say about this in the not-too-distant future," the Defence Secretary concluded. Britain has deployed more than 5,000 troops in Afghanistan. Posted by: Fred 2007-03-21 |
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