Afstan: Less fight in Taliban

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant thinks this year will be quite different from the last:

The commander of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan says his troops aren't likely to face another summer of pitched battle against hundreds of Taliban.

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant suggested yesterday that NATO troops will have to fight smarter -- using both intelligence and development assistance -- as insurgents may well turn to tactics such as kidnapping...

"The Taliban have learned that they cannot take NATO and (the International Security and Assistance Force) on head-to-head," he said...

Without large military buildups to fight, NATO will focus on Taliban leadership, Grant said.

"We're trying to focus on the decision-makers and either capture them or kill them."

That means a greater use of intelligence, both in Kandahar and along the porous border with Pakistan.

Local Afghans, tired of constant fighting, are opening up.

"The local people are becoming part of the security solution," Grant said. "They'll come up to patrols that we have on the ground, saying, 'There's a weapons cache over there,' or 'They've placed a roadside bomb over in this location.'..

This picture seems well reflected in this operation:

Complete success is being claimed for the largest Afghan-led operation yet against the Taliban.

Afghan army forces and police have now purged the Nad Ali district of Helmand of 400 Taliban fighters, following a series of chaotic battles...

The operation, which began last week during the Persian new year celebrations of Nawruz, involved 400 Afghan security personnel, the biggest Afghan-led sweep yet in the Nato offensive in Helmand.

Crucially, it was also backed by local militias, whose commanders had sworn to remove the Taliban from their land...

The Afghan army soldiers patrolling through the fields of Nad Ali also boast new helmets, flak jackets and weapons - the first signs of a $2 billion US aid package designed to turn a ragtag force with an acute desertion problem into an army that would allow Western troops to begin pulling out. Another $6.2 billion is promised to the corrupt and widely mistrusted Afghan police force...

The CF are also doing their bit helping the Afghan National Army.