Kandahar gains came with 'brutal' tactics

[unhappycamper]

Kandahar gains came with 'brutal' tactics
By Gareth Porter
Dec 21, 2010

WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration's claim of "progress" in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October.

But those tactical gains came at the price of further exacerbating the basic US strategic weakness in Afghanistan - antagonism toward the foreign presence shared throughout the Pashtun south.

The military offensive in Kandahar, which had been opposed clearly and vocally by the local leadership in the province, was accompanied by an array of military tactics marked by increased brutality. The most prominent of those tactics was a large-scale demolition of homes that has left widespread bitterness among the civilians who had remained in their villages when the US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) offensive was launched, as well as those who had fled before the offensive.

The unprecedented home demolition policy and other harsh tactics used in the offensive suggest that General David Petraeus, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, has abandoned the notion that he will ever win over the population in those Taliban strongholds.

The New York Times first reported the large-scale demolition of houses in a November 16 story that said US troops in Arghandab, Zhari and Panjwaii districts had been using armored bulldozers, high explosives, missiles and airstrikes in "routinely destroying almost every unoccupied home or unused farm building in areas where they are operating".

[Selatius]

1. The Red Army leveled entire villages in retaliation for their troops being ambushed back in the 80s.

It didn't break the local resistance. Instead, the reaction was that the guerrilla fighters treated captured Red Army soldiers with even more cruelty than before.