The big Taliban strategy switcheroo

Snake clarifies the new Taliban tactic, and explains what it will mean to Afghan people.
By: Snake


In a BBC telephone interview, a Taliban leader talked about the surprises his organization has in store for the Afghanistan War season 2007/08. In short, it will be a bomb.
In fact, it will be a multitude of bombs, carried or driven by people (those are called ''suicide bombers'') to be used on targets in the capital, Kabul. And the targets include, well, almost everything that can be destroyed and/or killed.
The good news is they won't target things like the sky, the moon, love, bad musical taste and stuff like that.

The bad news-they'll target everything and everyone else.

And that's the new Taliban strategy. Concentrate on Kabul, and primarily use suicide attacks. People in the capital, if they have electricity needed to power their radio (80% to 90% is probably still in blissful darkens) that is, are certainly thinking: ''God, what else? Alien invasion? Volcano? The plague? Oh wait, we already have the plague...''

As the warlord explained during the interview, their last offensive tactic didn't work out as they had hoped. Most likely the reason for that is the fact that their previous tactic revolved around meeting behind barns and outhouses in Helmand province in the evening, camping and relaxing, and then shooting on the first NATO convoy that passes by in the morning. I don't know if you ever saw a Taliban gunmen firing his AK-47; the thing is - you shouldn't hold the gun by the magazine - that way, you won't hit jack shit. Also, it's a bad idea to empty your clip in a single burst, because the barrel will jump all over the place (even 11 year old kids know that, from Counter Strike-short bursts only). For some reason, the Taliban prefer that kind of handling; maybe that's their version of bad-ass gangsta style.

On the other hand, NATO soldiers hold their guns in a totally uninteresting way, but can hit a man 400 yards away. That, in combination with their aircraft, APC, satellite imagery, J-DAM bombs, and similar deadly things, was a good indicator of the shear pointlessness of the ''direct attack'' approach. In spite of that, the Taliban stuck with it for 5 years.
No more, if we can believe their PR; simply, it's not that the last tactic failed, it's just that this one is much better. From now on, de facto suicide attacks on NATO bases and personel will be changed to real suicide attacks on markets, check points, government buildings, music shops, girl schools and other soft targets. The leader also stated that they had a bunch of eager volunteers, so the stream of human detonations should be long and continuous.

You should think that this information would cause some concern with the top NATO generals. Not at all, because, according to them, the Multinational Force is winning. Why, it was winning all the time, and will continue to do so, even when the explosions start to rock the streets on a daily basis.

So, what's new on the Afghanistan front?
NATO is winning, Taliban are winning, and the citizens of Kabul can watch live how their city becomes Baghdad 2.0.