Stop Trying to Win Just Part of the War

The Taliban are gaining control of the countryside and control or contest 45% of Afghanistan's districts.

Hopefully, this situation simply reflects halting the attrition on the dispersed and isolated Afghan outposts by pulling them into more defensible locations to build up offensive power.

If not a temporary expedient, abandoning the countryside to the Taliban will expose the government urban areas to siege and leave the government vulnerable to a crack in morale that allows the Taliban to storm a city and hold it. We've seen this happen although government counter-attacks threw them out.

Further, no counter-terrorism strategy can be carried out without a counter-insurgency strategy that provides the flow of on-the-ground information about the terrorists needed to go after them. This requires being out in the rural areas and imposing control.

Afghan forces have to go on the offensive to defeat the Taliban and scatter them, spread forces out to control or protect the people in the rural areas, and have coalition air support (fires, transport, surveillance, logistics) to defend those dispersed outposts and garrisons while pursuing the atomized elements to keep them on the defensive.