Battle to retake key Taleban town

[Eugene]

Source: BBC News

Last Updated: Friday, 7 December 2007, 17:48 GMT

Battle to retake key Taleban town

International and Afghan troops have begun a major offensive
to retake a strategic town in southern Afghanistan from the
Taleban, Nato sources said.

Nato says Afghan and British ground troops used heavy gunfire
against the Taleban on the outskirts of Musa Qala.

It says the main assault will be carried out overnight by US
soldiers who have been dropped in by helicopter.

The Taleban say they have 2,000 troops defending the town in
Helmand province, which they seized in February.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7132405.stm

[rockybelt]

1. Had the soldiers

been allowed to stay there and complete that mission the towns would not have to be re-taken.

How many more Americans are going to have their lives taken by this assinine administration with their clusterfuck mentality leading us down the shit hole?

Re-taking the towns. Bush pulled them out of Afghanistan now let this little coward turd go in and re-take the towns. And bring the shooter with you. He's good at close range.

[rockybelt]

2. Had the soldiers

been allowed to stay there and complete that mission the towns would not have to be re-taken.

How many more Americans are going to have their lives taken by this assinine administration with their clusterfuck mentality leading us down the shit hole?

Re-taking the towns. Bush pulled them out of Afghanistan now let this little coward turd go in and re-take the towns. And bring the shooter with you. He's good at close range.

[Yupster]

4. There were never many US troops in Afghanistan

The original idea was that the Afghans would not tolerate a Western presence in their country, so the takeover was accomplished with small teams of US soldiers helping the Northern Alliance and warlord armies we could buy.

After the takeover, the idea was for the US footprint to remain small and to have small groups of hunter squads stay far outside the cities to keep the Taliban fighting in the mountains.

It's been the last couple of years where more and more western soldiers have been coming in to plant a bigger and bigger footprint on the country. I don't know if that will work, or if the original idea will turn out to be correct that the more western soldiers, the more the resistance will grow.

[rockybelt]

5. No matter where

we go in the Middle East, that will be what will happen. They are not fighting us because they hate "freedom", they are fighting us because we are there.
Now, you concentrate a lot of taliban in the area, send in more US troops, you get more taliban and more insurgents. They kill more Americans and bush's war keeps going.

[ohio2007]

7. Canada issues ultimatum to Afghan elders ( independent of US or Afghan govt. officials )

- Post Media Reply
Canada is toughening its stance in Afghanistan.

The military is telling tribal leaders they must reject the Taliban in order to get security and reconstruction help.

But some Afghans feel the choice is no choice at all. Opposing the Taliban could put them in the cross-hairs. But failing to oppose the Taliban means international forces won't protect them.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=642_1197136742
al Jazeera video
suggests Canada has free reign in the areas they are responsible for.

[ohio2007]

3. "The Taleban say they have 2,000 troops "

..funny..
but we all know when the shit hits the fan, they put on their burqa "cloaking devices" and the deaths of women and children are reported.

should know in a week thanks to 'freedoom of the press' telegraphing the attack plans ;)

[ohio2007]

6. Toll rises in Taleban town battle

snip

The Taleban have held the town since February, when they retook it after British troops pulled out last year.

The twelve Taleban were killed during fighting, while the two children were killed when security forces clashed with Taleban travelling in a convoy with civilians, a spokesman for the Afghan defence ministry said.


snip
The Taleban took it over in February, in contravention of a controversial deal brokered with tribal elders when British troops withdrew.

It has since become the main centre of drugs trading in Afghanistan.
The assault is the first major operation where the new Afghan army is playing a leading role.

snip


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7133994.stm

This battle is being fought in the taliban homeland. The Brits turned the town over to local taliban tribal elders.....
they were always taliban.

They need to get the Afghan soldiers to remain there. Good luck with that unless we can back them up when they dial 911 for air support



http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9c3_1197093007

[ohio2007]

8. Exclusive: Eyewitness Account of Huge Taliban Defeat

Afghanistan's government flag was raised Wednesday on what had been one of the biggest strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and a leading world center of heroin production.

The town of about 45,000 people was secured at about 9:30 a.m. as Afghan troops, steered by British soldiers and U.S. Green Berets, drove out remnants of the Taliban resistance from Musa Qala in the opium poppy region of northern Helmand.

...........
Faced with a full brigade of NATO forces, a brigade of Afghan government fighters and the defection of a key Taliban commander, the Taliban chose not to flee at first but to fight a desperate battle.

..........
U.S. forces believe the Taliban were backed by a large strength of foreign fighters, including those linked to al Qaeda. Soldiers who I accompanied found one dead fighter whose notebook revealed he was from Pakistan.

While hundreds of Taliban are believed to have been killed, two British soldiers and one American soldier lost their lives. All the deaths, however, resulted from vehicles striking mines left not, it is believed, by the Taliban but by Soviet forces in the 1980s.


.......
In a controversial move, Musa Qala had been abandoned the previous year after British troops lost seven lives defending a base in the town from waves of Taliban attacks. Although handed over, in theory, to the elders of the town last October, it was taken over by the Taliban by February and became one of the few major places in Afghanistan where the Taliban could operate in the open, trying to set up their own local government and courts.

Last year's British-backed deal was criticized openly by U.S. commanders and the recapture of the town heals an open wound that undermined claims by NATO that the Taliban were being defeated militarily.


http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/12/exclusive-eyewi.html

Now, can the Afghans hold the town of 45,000 that was the Taliban stronghold for over a decade ?

The Taliban certainly couldn't make much of a stand in holding it. when the Brits returned.