ianstone
10-09-2010, 03:48 PM
Taliban on verge of collapse, NATO and Afghan officials believe
THE NATO coalition assault on Taliban insurgency chiefs has led to low-level fighters taking on the US and Afghanistan is now at a watershed as the war enters its 10th year today.
The best Taliban commanders are dead or captured. Their men are harried and subject to constant attack and betrayal. They are under-equipped, overwhelmed and demoralised. In a word, the Taliban are losing.
In Britain and the US there may be doubt and confusion over the future of the Afghan war, but in southern Afghanistan the description of the Taliban insurgency by senior figures at the forefront of the fighting is bold and unequivocal.
The troop surge is working, they say. The Taliban is at breaking point and an Iraq-style watershed, when momentum is shifting in a favour of the NATO coalition, may be nigh. It amounts to a ray of hope for NATO aims as the war begins its 10th year today.
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"The Taliban are getting an absolute arse-kicking," said one top-level Westerner deeply involved with Operation Ham Kari, the latest big push by US and British forces in Kandahar. "It's been their worst year since 2001-02. We're taking them off the battlefield in industrial numbers. We're convinced that the initiative has really shifted."
Reports yesterday underlined the trend, with airstrikes and ground operations killing dozens of insurgents in Takhar province and the death of a senior Taliban commander in the north of the country.
Ham Kari, the focal point of the US surge strategy and critical to the overall outcome, began in the spring and aimed to seize the initiative from the insurgents in their southern heartland. Now in its final phase, the operation is intended to break the insurgency's back in a conclusive enough fashion to prove "irreversible momentum" in favour of US and NATO forces before mid-term elections in America, the NATO summit in Lisbon and President Barack Obama's December appraisal of the surge strategy.
The fighting in the south is now concentrated in three key districts around the edge of Kandahar: Zhari, Panjwayi and Arghandab. US casualties there will add to more than 1200 Americans killed in the conflict since the first US airstrikes hit Taliban positions on October 7, 2001.
Yet senior military and civilian officials, Afghan and Western, insist that the record levels of NATO casualties this year - the worst since the war began - are in keeping with the spike that accompanied the surge in Iraq, another gamble that ultimately succeeded. More importantly, they counter that in Afghanistan the insurgents' suffering is greater than NATO's and that the surge is dismantling the Taliban's organisational structure.
"The Taliban are broken and defeated here," Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the President and the south's most powerful Afghan leader, told The Times yesterday.
"They are in a miserable state. Their best commanders are all dead and their fighters run here and there. Their casualties are high and they can barely fight."
Witnesses at a key meeting in Kandahar city on Tuesday between NATO commanders and their Afghan security counterparts described every officer present as agreeing that in southern Afghanistan "the Taliban are a spent force". Those attending included the Afghan 205 Corps commander, two Afghan brigadiers, the regional police and intelligence commanders, as well as British and American officers.
One Western witness said: "The ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] may be a little quieter about it as we've got the `too good to be true' syndrome or else are afraid to be taken for fools, but the evidence of what is going on here is piling up."
Though at various times during the past decade individual NATO commanders in Afghanistan have claimed to have had a decisive effect upon the insurgency, which they have usually later recanted, this time the evidence of a widespread Taliban collapse appears detailed and convincing. It has been illuminated by an overwhelming significant intelligence breakthrough that officials claim has penetrated the Taliban insurgency in the south from top to bottom.
"We see an organisation that looks like any other army in reverse," said the official. "They say that their higher headquarters don't get it, that they haven't got the people, they haven't got the equipment. No ammunition. No detonators. Suicide bombers are failing to show up. Locals no longer agreeing to bury their dead or help the wounded to aid stations. Their leadership and logistical train has broken apart. The organisation is so chopped up that we are seeing mailroom guys trying to run the corporation."
However, though militarily confident, Western officials in the south still caution that a failure in Afghan governance could fracture their extensive gains by failing to reconcile Taliban fighters in a peace process.
THE NATO coalition assault on Taliban insurgency chiefs has led to low-level fighters taking on the US and Afghanistan is now at a watershed as the war enters its 10th year today.
The best Taliban commanders are dead or captured. Their men are harried and subject to constant attack and betrayal. They are under-equipped, overwhelmed and demoralised. In a word, the Taliban are losing.
In Britain and the US there may be doubt and confusion over the future of the Afghan war, but in southern Afghanistan the description of the Taliban insurgency by senior figures at the forefront of the fighting is bold and unequivocal.
The troop surge is working, they say. The Taliban is at breaking point and an Iraq-style watershed, when momentum is shifting in a favour of the NATO coalition, may be nigh. It amounts to a ray of hope for NATO aims as the war begins its 10th year today.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/taliban-on-verge-of-collapse-nato-and-afghan-officials-believe/story-e6frg6so-1225935962365#sidebar-end)
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/taliban-on-verge-of-collapse-nato-and-afghan-officials-believe/story-e6frg6so-1225935962365#sidebar-start)
"The Taliban are getting an absolute arse-kicking," said one top-level Westerner deeply involved with Operation Ham Kari, the latest big push by US and British forces in Kandahar. "It's been their worst year since 2001-02. We're taking them off the battlefield in industrial numbers. We're convinced that the initiative has really shifted."
Reports yesterday underlined the trend, with airstrikes and ground operations killing dozens of insurgents in Takhar province and the death of a senior Taliban commander in the north of the country.
Ham Kari, the focal point of the US surge strategy and critical to the overall outcome, began in the spring and aimed to seize the initiative from the insurgents in their southern heartland. Now in its final phase, the operation is intended to break the insurgency's back in a conclusive enough fashion to prove "irreversible momentum" in favour of US and NATO forces before mid-term elections in America, the NATO summit in Lisbon and President Barack Obama's December appraisal of the surge strategy.
The fighting in the south is now concentrated in three key districts around the edge of Kandahar: Zhari, Panjwayi and Arghandab. US casualties there will add to more than 1200 Americans killed in the conflict since the first US airstrikes hit Taliban positions on October 7, 2001.
Yet senior military and civilian officials, Afghan and Western, insist that the record levels of NATO casualties this year - the worst since the war began - are in keeping with the spike that accompanied the surge in Iraq, another gamble that ultimately succeeded. More importantly, they counter that in Afghanistan the insurgents' suffering is greater than NATO's and that the surge is dismantling the Taliban's organisational structure.
"The Taliban are broken and defeated here," Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the President and the south's most powerful Afghan leader, told The Times yesterday.
"They are in a miserable state. Their best commanders are all dead and their fighters run here and there. Their casualties are high and they can barely fight."
Witnesses at a key meeting in Kandahar city on Tuesday between NATO commanders and their Afghan security counterparts described every officer present as agreeing that in southern Afghanistan "the Taliban are a spent force". Those attending included the Afghan 205 Corps commander, two Afghan brigadiers, the regional police and intelligence commanders, as well as British and American officers.
One Western witness said: "The ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] may be a little quieter about it as we've got the `too good to be true' syndrome or else are afraid to be taken for fools, but the evidence of what is going on here is piling up."
Though at various times during the past decade individual NATO commanders in Afghanistan have claimed to have had a decisive effect upon the insurgency, which they have usually later recanted, this time the evidence of a widespread Taliban collapse appears detailed and convincing. It has been illuminated by an overwhelming significant intelligence breakthrough that officials claim has penetrated the Taliban insurgency in the south from top to bottom.
"We see an organisation that looks like any other army in reverse," said the official. "They say that their higher headquarters don't get it, that they haven't got the people, they haven't got the equipment. No ammunition. No detonators. Suicide bombers are failing to show up. Locals no longer agreeing to bury their dead or help the wounded to aid stations. Their leadership and logistical train has broken apart. The organisation is so chopped up that we are seeing mailroom guys trying to run the corporation."
However, though militarily confident, Western officials in the south still caution that a failure in Afghan governance could fracture their extensive gains by failing to reconcile Taliban fighters in a peace process.