Coalition Routs Taliban in Southern Afghanistan

[Pirate Smile]

Source: The New York Times


An American soldier looked out Tuesday from a guard post in Arghandab, Afghanistan, a strategic district in Kandahar Province north of the city of Kandahar.

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of the insurgency’s base of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters to flee strongholds they have held for years in the face of the buildup of American forces, NATO commanders and local Afghan officials said.
A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled for years.

Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy — like a small cruise missile — and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.

NATO commanders are careful not to overstate their successes — they acknowledge they made that mistake earlier in the year when they undertook a high-profile operation against Marja that did not produce lasting gains. But they say they are making “deliberate progress” and have seized the initiative from the insurgents.

Western and Afghan civilian officials are more outspoken, saying that heavy losses for the Taliban have sapped the momentum the insurgency had in the area. Unlike the Marja operation, they say, the one in Kandahar is a comprehensive civil and military effort that is changing the public mood as well as improving security.
“We now have the initiative. We have created momentum,” said Maj. Gen. Nick Carter, the British commander of the NATO coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, who has overseen the Kandahar operation for the last year. “It is everything put together in terms of the effort that has gone in over the last 18 months and it is undoubtedly having an impact.”



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/world/asia/21kandahar.html?_r=2

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:shrug:

The tweet that brought this to my attention:

@abumuqawama Note this story was reported by one of the best and most skeptical journos in Afg. RT @afpakchannel: Momentum! We haz it! http://ow.ly/2WSt3

[DavidDvorkin]

1. You don't rout guerillas

They move away from superior forces. That's part of the nature of guerilla warfare.