Taliban ‘On Brink of Defeat’ in Afghanistan
After quite some good news coming out of Iraq in the last couple of months, there’s now some good news from Afghanistan: according to the commander of the British forces in that country, missions by special forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have “decapitated” the Taliban and brought the war in that country “to a tipping point.”
The new “precise, surgical” tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith.
In the past two years an estimated 7,000 Taliban have been killed, the majority in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But it is the “very effective targeted decapitation operations” that have removed “several echelons of commanders”.
This in turn has left the insurgents on the brink of defeat, the head of Task Force Helmand said.
“The Taliban are much weaker,” he said from 16 Air Assault Brigade headquarters in Lashkar Gah.
“The tide is clearly ebbing not flowing for them. Their chain of command is disrupted and they are short of weapons and ammunition.”
And there’s more good news: not only are Western military troops destroying the Taliban, Afghanis in Helmand province (one of the bulwarks of the Taliban) are increasingly turning against the Taliban as well. This while Taliban terrorists are dependent on locals for their food and water; no local support, means no water and food.
“I can therefore judge the Taliban insurgency a failure at the moment,” said Brig Carleton-Smith. “We have reached the tipping point.”
The task is now to regenerate the economy to win over the civilian population of Helmand, the base for 8,000 British soldiers.
Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, appears to be a town on the cusp of an economic boom if security remains stable.
A new airport will be ready by the end of this year and a packaging factory by the end of next year.
This could enable the soil-rich “fruit basket of Afghanistan” to export its food.
LOL The Taliban almost defeated. They will never be defeated, they will fight for what is right, and it’s very nearly 100 British soldiers dead, in a year’s time, it will be 1,000.
How revealing that you think the Taliban are fighting for "what is right" and that you “LOL” while predicting 900 more soldiers’ deaths.
And to think we were told that the anti-war types ONLY objected to Iraq and that they didn’t EVER cheer for the enemy to win… :rolleyes:
It’s nice that this UK general makes this claim while the NATO commander says Afghanistan is undermanned. Now which one is telling the truth and which one is spinning?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,508021,00.html
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=15074