Now they are having trouble even with the TV operations:
Taliban insurgents tried to storm a government building in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, setting off a firefight that killed at least five people, police said. ...
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and said it involved multiple targets. In a statement emailed to journalists, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the governor’s office, the provincial reconstruction team and the intelligence headquarters were all hit.
Zadran [NOTE: the police chief of Paktika province), however, said the attack was confined to one building.
So the Taliban planned multiple attacks to show their power, yet managed to carry out one with 4 attackers that failed (3 of the 5 killed were terrorists). The others were apparently scared away or just not ready.
We are winning in Afghanistan.
In the south where we focused our surge forces, we've beat down the Taliban and so far have kept them from counter-attacking:
The Taliban are disappearing from many parts of Kandahar and Helmand provinces. This has always been the heartland of the Taliban, but now there are a growing number of areas where Afghan soldiers and police control security, while NATO troops chase after the remaining Taliban. The American commando raids at night have been particularly damaging to the drug gangs and Taliban, and much cash and many threats have been directed to government officials to get the raids stopped. The government has tried, several times, to force the Americans to halt the raids. But the government, the Americans and the enemy all know what is at stake here, so the raids continue.
And we are preparing to beat down the Taliban in the east where until now we have been preparing for the post-surge offensive, as LTG Scaparrotti stated recently:
This past winter we surpassed our own projections, significantly degrading the insurgents' capabilities by targeting their command and control, their support bases and their infiltration routes. As a result, we created the right conditions for a successful summer fighting season and supported the process of transition.
In July, seven areas, Kabul province, Panjshir, Herat city, Lashkar Gah, Bamyan province, Mehtar Lam and Mazar-e Sharif, began the process of transitioning to the Afghan security lead. Although it remains too early to completely withdraw forces from these areas, across the board we are seeing progress. The Afghan security forces, local government and, most importantly, Afghan citizens in these areas welcome the responsibility and are taking it upon themselves to contribute to the process.
Our objectives this fall and winter will be the following: maintain pressure on the enemy; expand on our security gains; continue to hold the south, both Kandahar and the central Helmand River valley; maintain a strong offensive in the east; enable the Afghan security forces to take the lead during the spring fighting season; and finally, we will continue to press reintegration at all levels across Afghanistan. ...
In terms of the relationship to the south, when we talk about our efforts and where we place our priorities, it's not simply about the numbers of troops or the number of maneuver battalions that we shift between, say, the south or the east. Today we have many more resources that are actually almost as significant, and that has to do with our joint fires; our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms; our helicopters, et cetera, all of which are probably not as readily seen but allow us to really focus combat power in a different way.
So we see success in the south and are going to focus on the east, but not with more line combat battalions, it seems. Regional Command East has been reinforced, but not with additional American infantry battalions.
For the fight in the east, our efforts against the sanctuaries in Pakistan are critical:
The U.S. CIA UAV campaign against Islamic terrorists in Pakistan (mainly North Waziristan) has been very effective. Al Qaeda has been rendered impotent by all the losses to leadership and technical personnel (especially bomb builders). Because of this, last year most of the UAV missile attacks were against Taliban and Haqqani Network leaders. These were located through various means, one of the most important being a network of informants on the ground.
Even though the Pakistanis won't conduct a proper counter-insurgency campaign in their wild west, for success in Afghanistan just beating down the terrorists can be good enough. So don't think that the drone example of "counter-terrorism" is an alternative inside Afghanistan.
We are winning. I know it is frustrating to still be fighting more than ten years after going into Afghanistan. Yet winning a long war is still better than losing a long war. Indeed, letting our enemies win after all these years will just encourage them in the future to hold on in the belief they can outlast us no matter how long it takes. We need to win.
We can win this long war. But with the experience of seeing the Obama administration cut Iraq loose after we won, I take nothing for granted.
