Since then, the enemy has surged back into Afghanistan in summer offensives after holing up in warm havens over the winter. This last summer was possibly the worst due to lots of new money for recruiting jihadi wannabees in Pakistan. They were bloodied up a lot in their offensive, losing a large fraction of their numbers while killing few on our side.
Normally, the jihadis would be resting this winter and debating whether to sign up for another round next summer. Instead of letting them recover their morale over the winter, we plan to go after the enemy this winter:
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Pritt, who oversees the U.S.-led effort to train the Afghan military, said Afghan forces have tripled the number of forward bases to more than 60 and plan to spend the winter harassing Taliban and gathering intelligence from combat outposts deep inside rebel strongholds.
"They're much better equipped for winter operations than the Taliban. I'm hoping for a lot of snow this winter," Pritt said during a visit to The Associated Press bureau in Dubai.
Now we've equipped our Afghan allies to operate better in the winter. So we will hit our enemies this winter to deny the enemy a chance to recover and come back at us.
Unfortunately, I assume this will only be inside Afghanistan so many of the enemy will still be able to rest on the Pakistan side of the border. Unless the Pakistanis will join us over the winter in policing their side of the border.
Either way, we should not face nearly as large an enemy offensive in the spring of 2007 as we did this last year.
