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Afghanistan
NATO Afghanistan mission cools Taliban threat
2007-04-04
KANDAHAR: A NATO mission in the southwest of Afghanistan has caught Taliban leaders off guard and diminished the enemy's ability to fight a spring offensive in the area, officials said Saturday after announcing the elimination of several key Taliban leaders.
I guess announcing "Dread Spring Offensive 2007" before you start wasn't such a good idea after all
"We're operating on our terms now," Lt.-Col. Stephane Grenier, a public information officer with NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said in an interview, touting the success of its Operation Achilles. "We've restricted [the Taliban's] freedom of movement, we've disturbed how they normally do business, we've had them rethink how to resupply themselves," he said, explaining the new mission takes a different approach than some of the others that have gone before. "There hasn't been a whole lot of fighting, but that's not the point," he said.

"The point is to destabilize the enemy's ability to fight and to conduct destabilizing operations in the ways they traditionally did." The comments come as NATO announced Saturday it has eliminated several key members of the Taliban leadership in recent airstrikes in Helmand province. Launched in early March, Achilles was intended as a way to secure areas in the northern part of Helmand province, a poppy-rich territory where insurgents have generally had free reign.

Grenier said the ISAF has had to change its approach for this operation because the Taliban has moved further towards an insurgent style of warfare where they're even less eager to engage in open combat than before. While Grenier was optimistic about the progress in the region, he stopped short of declaring any kind of victory, even short-term.

In a written statement, the commander of NATO's troops in the south of Afghanistan added that he believes the Achilles mission -- which involves 4,500 NATO troops from several nations, including Canada, Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands, as well 1,000 Afghan soldiers -- has "essentially taken the initiative away from insurgents." "The Taliban extremist leadership in the south have been taken off guard by Operation Achilles and are on the defensive at this stage," said Maj.-Gen Ton van Loon. "We have inflicted serious damage to their command and control infrastructure as well as their ability to resupply," he added.

In that same statement, ISAF announced the elimination of several key Taliban leaders as part of Achilles during air strikes of an extremist compound in a remote village in northern Helmand on March 28. Officials did not release the number of people killed, saying only "several insurgents were killed during the strike including key Taliban leaders." On Saturday, ISAF officials also announced the recent capture or elimination of other Taliban leaders in another areas of the country as well.

In one operation in the Kandahar City region on Friday, ISAF and Afghan forces captured several key Taliban extremists, the statement said. Among those taken were Bacha Aka and brothers Taj and Raz Mohammed, three men who all reportedly helped to plan last month's failed assassination of Mullah Naqibullah, a respected tribal elder in Kandahar City.
Posted by:Steve

#5  Kill the body too. Twice. And burn it
Posted by: Frank G   2007-04-04 18:44  

#4  "Chop off the head, the body dies."

gorb - what if Taliban is a Medusa?
Posted by: Glenmore   2007-04-04 18:43  

#3  Chop off the head, the body dies.
Posted by: gorb   2007-04-04 14:58  

#2  That is a mighty positive spin on things Moose. I look at it another way. A safe haven is just that, a location where the Talibs can resupply and train new recruits. They don't give a damn whether the welcome mat is layed out or not. They will use terror to force their way in.

This is a positive sign, but I am going to have to see a whole lot more for a whole lot longer to believe that having a safe haven next door is not a net benefit to the Talibs.
Posted by: remoteman   2007-04-04 14:29  

#1  This leads back to my suspicion that we wanted Perv to open up a "safe haven" for the Taliban outside of Afghanistan, so that we could push them there and secure the southern third of the country in their absence.

By doing so, it will be a lot harder for them to return--they will find no vacancy signs up all over the place, and as soon as the outsiders arrive in town, the locals will inform the police and military.

Meanwhile, back in the "safe haven", the al-Qaeda Chechens and Uzbeks are making themselves so obnoxious that the locals are slaughtering them.

This just seems to be working well all around.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-04-04 12:20  

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