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.
About Me
- Brian J. Dunn
- I live and write in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan AB and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. Former American history instructor and retired nonpartisan research analyst. I write on Blogger and Substack. Various military and private journals have published my occasional articles on military subjects. See "My Published Works" on the TDR web version or under the mobile version drop-down menu for citations and links.
