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Great article. The spring/summer/fall offensive will kill,route, and disrupt a lot of goons. Sometimes I wonder if Zawahari and UBL are in a position to get feedback on just how bad things are for their goons.
Surely Z and UBL are simply trying to hide to survive and make an occasional tape up to recruite fresh haji to step up to the plate and die.
This Kunar Province, based on what I read is a heavily forested mountain area. Being a border province in the upper NE, it has long been a good area for insurgent types to gather as it has plenty of area of cover. It was used for this purpose by the Afghans during the Russian invasion.
And being on the border with Pakistan a good area to ingress from the remote Paki side and egress when things get hot.
As the Pakistan army keeps pressures up on their NW border provinces such as the Tribal Area of N/S Wazirstain and the Peshwar region, the Taliban and al Qaeda groups just have less areas to operate out of. And much beyond Peshwar on the Paki side, it becomes really difficult ot operate. For one enters into really high mountain ranges unfit for any type operations. Foot paths along treacherous plus 50° slopes makes for real tough travel. And surely only those that live in these high altitude places are tough enough to handle such journeys. So surely the more southern provinces are where most of the action takes place.
At any rate, it appears the mujahadeen are going to have a little problem staying alive, as US and ANA forces pick them off at our convinance.

This Kunar Province, based on what I read is a heavily forested mountain area. Being a border province in the upper NE, it has long been a good area for insurgent types to gather as it has plenty of area of cover. It was used for this purpose by the Afghans during the Russian invasion. And being on the border with Pakistan a good area to ingress from the remote Paki side and egress when things get hot.

As the Pakistan army keeps pressures up on their NW border provinces such as the Tribal Area of N/S Wazirstain and the Peshwar region, the Taliban and al Qaeda groups just have less areas to operate out of. And much beyond Peshwar on the Paki side, it becomes really difficult ot operate. For one enters into really high mountain ranges unfit for any type operations. Foot paths along treacherous plus 50° slopes makes for real tough travel. And surely only those that live in these high altitude places are tough enough to handle such journeys. So surely the more southern provinces are where most of the action takes place.

You have it exactly right -

Most simply can't appreciate the difficulties at trying to run sustained Ops in this region of the world. The logistics alone are a complete nightmare - Though we've put the needed time and blood in over the last 4 years...and we are now in position to start running this sustained Ops at an almost a continous rate if we so desire (during 6-8 months out of the year).