Posted on 05/19/2006 6:23:40 AM PDT by milwguy
Taliban's new commander ready for a fight By Syed Saleem Shahzad KARACHI - The Taliban's military offensive has begun in earnest in southern Afghanistan, with many key districts already captured by the militia that retreated from power in 2001 after the US-led invasion. The scale and frequency of the Taliban's revitalized insurgency can be attributed directly to the recent appointment by Taliban leader Mullah Omar of legendary mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani as overall military field commander. In the latest action - the biggest since the Taliban's ousting - in Helmand province, between 300 and 400 heavily armed Taliban fighters stormed a remote village. At least 100 people were killed, including 15 or more Afghan police and a female Canadian soldier. Haqqani, a cleric, rose to fame during the decade of opposition to the Soviets in the 1980s. Coincidentally, at that time he was an ally of the United States. ... Meet Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, the only real hope for the Taliban resistance movement to be successful against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Saleem Shahzad is spot on with his assessment, Through the eyes of the Taliban (May 5, '04) Mullah Omar has provided Haqqani with major powers, funds and huge stockpiles of arms and ammunition and, most important, hundreds of youths who have been trained by the Iraqi resistance in urban guerrilla warfare. Mullah Omar has demarcated specific areas of Afghanistan to different commanders, but now Haqqani is commander-at-large. He has also been charged with coordinating suicide attackers throughout the country. He is authorized to wage battles anywhere he chooses in Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
The Taliban will be sorry in a relatively short time.
Don't count on help from the MSM. Despite what half of them might say on TV about Afghanistan being the only justified war in the war on terror, they'd be protesting that occupation if we hadn't decided to expand the war on terror to include Iraq.
The MSM is predominately anti-Republican, and thus any war, justified or not that a Republican President gets into is wrong. They're great cheerleaders when a Democrat is in the Oval Office, especially when that Democrat is wrong.
This guy is the pakistani tokyo rose.
I don't call a 100 armed thugs taking over a remote village a military victory.
Only if we kill them and stop playing this stupid catch and release game.
About 50 of them were killed or captured including the area commander so it was not a good start for the new Taliban offensive.
"Meet Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, the only real hope for the Taliban resistance movement to be successful against US-led forces in Afghanistan."
In that case, the Taliban will soon be without hope.
When the Taliban comes out to fight we kill them.
Win some lose some. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060519/ts_nm/afghan_taliban_dc
Do you kill them to?
Do you kill them to?
When you kill them supporters,sympathizers, spies and suppliers will have to look for something new to support or go somewhere else to support something old.
The Japanese were no more rational than the Muslims. The only way to make Muslims rational is to kill enough of the deadenders, like the Taliban, to show whatever is left of them their insanity.
First, Haqqani is probably their most capable military leader and regardless of the cause, you have to take battlefield competence into account.
Second, the Pashtun tribe which fuels the insurgency and is the source of the Taliban straddles the east and south Afghan-Pak border. Violence in the north & west parts of the country while still occurring, is at very low levels by Afghan historical standards.
Third, the April US offensive in the east with PakMil cooperation on their side of the border has defeated the TB elements and establsished Afghan army & police presence along the border and in areas where it has never been.
Fourth, our coalition partners are taking over security in the south and it is the Taliban avowed strategy to cause casualties in coalition members in order to precipitate their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Fifth, while PakMil cooperation in the east is good, in the south the Paki Army is oriented inward toward the separatist movement in Baluchistan with resultantly little anti-Taliban operations in the border region.
Bottom line, the Taliban are focusing their efforts in the south where they are relatively strongest in an attempt to split the coalition. They will make significant size (100+ pax) attacks against coalition troops and Afghan police in the southern provinces while using IEDs and occasional suicide bombers in the rest of the country to prevent security forces from repositioning. If our coalition holds together and continues to fight as aggressively as the Canadians are now doing, the Taliban will be defeated in the south and the planned NATO assumption of security operations for the whole country will proceed.
Here's the FR thread on that story.
One of my favorite analogies. In fact, the number of Japanese willing to conduct suicide ops against us was significantly more than what al qaeda has been able to muster; even though Japan had a much smaller population base and was in a shorter war. Without belittling the seriousness of the current Islamist threat, we have fought fanatical, fight to the death enemies before and have prevailed. Just as we will this time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.