Posted on 06/19/2008 6:04:30 AM PDT by Clive
ARGHANDAB DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of Taliban fighters have been killed or wounded after two days of fierce fighting over a strategic area just northwest of Kandahar City that insurgents had taken over at the start of the week.
By Thursday, all that remained was the mopping up of small scattered pockets of resistance, jubilant political leaders and Afghan and Canadian military commanders told reporters from a mountainside perch overlooking the entire battlefield in a wide river valley.
"This will give them a good lesson," Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said, referring to Taliban insurgents. Mr. Khalid said residents who had fled the area when Taliban infiltrated from the mountains to the north will be allowed to return in the days ahead.
First, though, Afghan authorities have to clear out landmines and roadside bombs planted by the insurgents, and fix destroyed bridges and culverts, he said. Residents are clamouring to get back after the fighting interrupted the important harvest period in the agriculturally rich valley, and some farmers have already been passing through checkpoints to get back to their crops and livestock.
Military officials did not want to divulge any numbers. Mr. Khalid, however, said there were no civilians deaths, but two Afghan National Army soldiers died. They were among the more than 1,000 government and coalition troops who launched an assault across the Arghandab River Wednesday morning.
"The enemy is defeated, but the enemy is still present," said Canada's Joint Task Force Afghanistan commander Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson. He said some of the insurgents had escaped the fight into adjoining districts.
"I'm encouraged by what I saw," Gen. Thompson said of the Afghan-led operation that saw Canadians and other NATO forces assume a supportive battle role, including providing helicopter gunship cover.
Gen. Thompson said Arghandab, while on the doorstep of the Taliban's birth city, is "not a friendly area to the Taliban" and that Afghan forces were assisted with intelligence from locals who wanted the invaders out.
The Taliban had perhaps hoped that a series of recent assassinations of local leaders might have eased the way for its fighters to move in and retake control of an area that has always been an essential conduit for invaders targeting Kandahar City, Afghanistan's second-largest city.
The Windsor Star
I'm so proud of our guys and our allies like the Canadians, Brits and the Poles.
I can't imagine what small unit fights are going to be after we start integrating UAV's and Predators into platoon and squad level tactics. They will truly have to live like moles.... underground and move by tunnel. ....... then we'll just develop better doppler sound detection and other technology to ferret these rats out.
You have to wonder if we just let them take a little just to draw them out, then kill them. The only down side is the MSM and obama try to use it politically.
It does make me happy to see that the villagers fled when the taliban came, that says it all.
Nice to see they broke two of the essential rules of conducting an insurgency — never to fight pitched battles with the occupying force and never to expose your forces to actions likely to cause casualties.
Go, NATO!
And prayers for the 2 Afghan soldiers who died.
Prayers to continue, but this is hopeful news. Thanks for the ping.
A classic.
Looks like they got overconfident.
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