Given the lack of an American-led offensive in Regional Command East as our original military plan called for following the offensive in Regional Command South in 2010, since our final surge was pulled out faster than the military wanted, it seems the offensive to defeat the Taliban in the east is one of a very different nature:
Fed up with the Taliban closing their schools and committing other acts of oppression, men in a village about 100 miles south of Kabul took up arms late last spring and chased out the insurgents with no help from the Afghan government or U.S. military.
Small-scale revolts in recent months like the one in Kunsaf, mostly along a stretch of desert south of the Afghan capital, indicate bits of a grass-roots, do-it-yourself anti-insurgency that the U.S. hopes Afghan authorities can transform into a wider movement. Perhaps it can undercut the Taliban in areas they still dominate after 11 years of war with the United States and NATO allies.
The effort in Ghazni Province looks like a long shot. The villagers don't readily embrace any outside authority, be it the Taliban, the U.S. or the Afghan government.
This isn't just something that is happening that we hope to exploit. We may not want to be visible, but we're there trying to make it happen since we can't lead the effort with our own troops:
Charlton said the U.S. and its coalition partners are taking a behind-the-scenes role — encouraging the Afghans to court the villagers while finding a role for U.S. Special Forces soldiers to forge the villagers into a fighting force as members of the Kabul-sanctioned Afghan Local Police. ...
"It's going to take time, it's not going to be an Anbar (Iraq) sweep," Lambert said. "It is going to be village by village, district by district, and we may not see the results of this for some years."
This is the Regional Command East offensive. No plan survives contact with the premature end of the surge. May it work well enough to win.
