Taliban Surges as U.S. Shifts Some Tasks to NATO

[DoYouEverWonder]

June 11, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 10 — A large springtime offensive by Taliban fighters has turned into the strongest show of force by the insurgents since American forces chased the Taliban from power in late 2001, and Afghan and foreign officials and local villagers blame a lack of United States-led coalition forces on the ground for the resurgence.

American forces are handing over operations in southern Afghanistan to a NATO force of mainly Canadian, British and Dutch troops, and militants have taken advantage of the transition to swarm into rural areas.

Coalition and Afghan forces now clash daily with large groups of Taliban fighters across five provinces of southern Afghanistan. In their boldest push, the Taliban fought battles in a district just less than 20 miles outside the southern city of Kandahar in late May, forcing hundreds of people to abandon their villages for refuge in the city and in other towns as coalition forces resorted to aerial bombardment.

The Taliban are running checkpoints on secondary roads and seizing control of remote district centers for a night or two before melting away again. In the most blatant symbol of their dominance of rural areas, the Taliban have even conducted trials under Islamic law, or Shariah, outside official Afghan courts, and recently carried out at least one public execution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/asia/11afghan.html?hp&ex=1150084800&en=720b7392d7a1edac&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Ah excuse me, Mr. Cheney, I thought we defeated the Taliban?

[Kutjara]

1. When we start handing stuff over to NATO or the UN...

...it means we can't control the situation and want to dump the hot potato onto some other sucker before we get too badly burned. Things must be going very badly if we're admitting to this.

[Igel]

8. This was planned for a while.

So either the failure was foreseen, or they've just got enough cohorts from the madaris to field a small army.

[Downtown Hound]

2. Somalia all over again

The minute the bulk of the Marine force pulled out of Mogadishu, Aidid began attacking the U.N forces. Looks like the same thing is happening in Afghanistan. If only Bushco had bothered to actually defeat the Taliban instead of just driving them out of the capital, oh well, I can dream can't I?

[daleo]

3. If 150,000 U.S. troops can't control Iraq

What hope do 20,000 NATO UN troops have in Afghanistan?

150,000 Soviet troops couldn't do much either.

[saigon68]

4. The Soviet troops did one thing

They lost the War

Lets see if the US is still there in ten years?

[rodeodance]

5. well, Bush did say other Presidents would have to deal with it. He is

right.

[daleo]

7. It's good that Gorbachev had the sense to recognize a lost cause

Who will the U.S. Gorbachev?

[rodeodance]

6. contradictory info being put out.

......"The situation is really, in the last four years, the most unstable and insecure I have seen," said Talatbek Masadykov, who is in charge of the United Nations assistance mission in Kandahar.

But he said accounts of just how bad the security situation was differed, particularly after a surge of fighting just west of Kandahar in recent weeks.

"From different tribal people we are hearing that the Taliban are regrouping," he said, "and from government officials that security is improving."

One international security official in Kandahar, who has several years of experience in Afghanistan and asked not to be named because of the nature of his information, said members of American and Canadian Special Forces units had told him that they were "not winning against the Taliban."