|
The Myth Of A Resurgent Taliban
By Investor's Business DailyWar On Terror: The steady demise of key Taliban leaders belies the drumbeat of a Taliban resurgence. From the Battle of the Bulge to the Tet offensive, our defeated enemies have often gone out in a blaze of glory. Last fall, an article in USA Today spoke of a "reborn Taliban" and a "Taliban comeback" that, rather than confronting U.S. and NATO forces head-on, had adopted the homicide bombing, beheadings and remote-controlled roadside bomb tactics of the Iraqi insurgency. That mantra has been repeated by others many times since. "We're getting stronger in every province and in every district and every village," Qari Mohammed Yousef Ahmadi, Taliban spokesman for southern Afghanistan, told USA Today. "We don't have helicopters and jet fighters. But we're giving America and its allies a tough time with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and ambushes. Our Muslim brothers in Iraq are using the same tactics." They also don't have a snowball's chance in Kandahar of prevailing as long as American and NATO determination remains firm. As in Iraq, they are trying to play the media fiddle. Interviews full of bravado and photos of car bombs been there, done that. The tactics used by their Muslim brothers are demonstrably failing as Sunni and Shiite unite against al-Qaida in Iraq, and even Democrats admit the surge led by Gen. David Petraeus is working. The life expectancy of Taliban leaders is short these days. Two months after the USA Today article appeared, a U.S. air strike killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Osmani, the Taliban's southern military commander, as he traveled in the southern province of Helmand. Osmani was one of the three top associates of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. As the Taliban's southern commander, he played a "central role in facilitating terrorist operations" such as roadside bombings, suicide attacks and ambushes against Afghan and international forces, according to U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins. Osmani had played a key role in some of the Taliban's most notorious excesses, including the destruction of the ancient Buddha statues at Bamiyan and the trial of Christian aid workers in 2001. In May, the top Taliban military commander, Mullah Dadullah, died fighting Afghan and NATO military forces in the Girishk district of Helmland province. Dadullah was known as Afghanistan's al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaida-in-Iraq leader who also is deceased. He was a member of the Taliban's 10-member leadership council and another close associate of Mullah Omar. Dadullah also was the Taliban's leading public figure. In frequent interviews in the Arab press, he would boast of training suicide bombers, executing suspected collaborators and beheading hostages. Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid rightly called him a "brutal and cruel commander." We commented recently on the fate of Abdullah Mehsud, one of the innocents said to be wrongly incarcerated for 25 months at Guantanamo before his release He returned to his native South Waziristan, where he rebuilt and led an estimated 5,000 foot soldiers, part of the Taliban "resurgence."
The "reborn Taliban" thesis fits in well with the Democratic argument that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the real war on terror in Afghanistan. After all, that's where Osama Bin Laden had his camps and planned 9/11. A resurgent Taliban would be proof our focus and Bush's strategy is wrong. But, as in Iraq, the Taliban knows we can't lose the war, only our will. That strategy was tried in Iraq and failed. We and our Iraqi allies are the real resurgents. Posted by: Steve White 2007-09-02 |
|
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=197799 |