Posted on 06/15/2007 1:53:18 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - The Taleban failed to mount their long-threatened spring offensive in Afghanistan, and indications are the guerrillas may have trouble recruiting fighters after the harvest, a NATO commander said.
‘The only spring offensive that has taken place this year is the one that NATO has conducted,’ British Brigadier John Lorimer, the one-star general who commands NATO’s forces in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, told Reuters.
The hot months are usually the peak fighting season in Afghanistan. The Taleban threatened -- and NATO’s own generals predicted -- a likely upsurge in guerrilla attacks early this year as the snow melted.
But Lorimer, speaking in an interview overnight at his headquarters in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, said NATO operations over the winter appeared to have disrupted guerrilla supply chains, making it more difficult for them to mount the sort of large-scale attacks that were common last year.
Lorimer commanded a series of combined U.S.-British NATO operations over the past two months, which the alliance says drove Taleban forces out of one of their main strongholds, the Sangin Valley carved by the Helmand River.
The NATO force, which took control of southern Afghanistan last year and aims to impose the rule of President Hamid Karzai’s government in Taleban areas, has portrayed the Sangin offensives as a major victory.
For the first time, British troops in the area were able to call on a newly assigned task force of American airborne reinforcements, allowing them to conduct operations much larger in scale than last year.
Lorimer said the next step is to bring government authority and aid to the area, which is heartland for both the Taleban and the opium trade.
‘What we’ve got to make sure when we do a kinetic operation in an area is that we’ve got to follow it up,’ he said. ‘Kinetic operation’ is a military expression for combat.
Opium harvest over But guerrillas still control an adjacent valley, Musa Qala, where British troops pulled out last October under a ceasefire that later collapsed. The Taleban have described that as a key victory of their own.
Lorimer acknowledged that Musa Qala had ‘totemic value’ because of the British withdrawal, but said it was not as strategically important as the areas where his forces have made gains since March.
‘Musa Qala is just another town in Afghanistan where the Taleban have control. It’s not unique.’
If last year’s patterns are repeated, the next big test for NATO will be whether the Taleban are able to recruit large numbers of farmers to take up arms after the harvest of the ubiquitous opium poppy crop. The labour-intensive harvest has finished in most areas over the past few weeks.
Last year large groups of Taleban struck NATO positions after the harvest and continued attacking throughout the hot summer.
Lorimer said it was too early to say conclusively whether the farmers the Taleban recruited in the past would instead stay home this year, but ‘the signs are encouraging’.
NATO refers to farmers who may take up arms with the guerrillas as ‘tier 2 Taleban’ to distinguish them from committed, full-time ‘tier 1’ fighters.
‘One of our aims, especially over the past two months, is to separate the tier 1 Taleban from the tier 2,’ he said.
Pinging the usual suspects.
Death To Taliban!
// me riots and burns mullah omar’s effigy!
No, this is wrong, the liberal MSM assures us that we are losing!
I found the NYT and Boston Globe to be offensive all spring. So perhaps this article is wrong ;)
Good work boys!
“and indications are the guerrillas may have trouble recruiting fighters after the harvest, a NATO commander said.”
One recruit named Harry Reid, decided to stay in the US to do his fighting for them.
But Lorimer, speaking in an interview overnight at his headquarters in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, said NATO operations over the winter appeared to have disrupted guerrilla supply chains, making it more difficult for them to mount the sort of large-scale attacks that were common last year.
As soon as our government does the same in Iraq, we may win the war!
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Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
Maybe the farmers theyre supposed to be courting really dont feel like having their asses kicked this year.
Guess they had some goats to hump, instead of getting them 72 virgins.
I have to wonder if the economics of the area (including opium farming) have become good enough that the farmers don’t feel like they have to take the second job with the Taliban.
I think 90 of them drowned trying to cross a river to get into the area.
Heh.
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