Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Afstan: New British approach

The switch in Taliban tactics (see this nice bit of imagination at Celestial Junk) has resulted in this switch in response (one just hopes there isn't too much "collateral damage"):
British forces in Afghanistan have switched tactics to counter a new wave of Taliban bombings and suicide attacks, a senior commander has said.

The Chief of Joint Operations, Lieutenant General Nick Houghton, said that they were now deliberately targeting key Taliban leaders in an attempt to drive a wedge between them and ordinary Afghans.

Giving evidence to the Commons Defence Committee, he acknowledged that attempts at the wholesale "eradication" of the Taliban and their supporters would simply alienate the local population.

At the same time, Defence Secretary Des Browne indicated that he was preparing to send more helicopters in support of military operations in Helmand province where British forces are concentrated.

Lt Gen Houghton said the Taliban appeared to have abandoned their tactics of last summer when they suffered heavy casualties mounting mass attacks on heavily-defended British positions.

"Increasingly, the switch this year has been towards the Taliban not taking on this tactic of mass attack but adopting a more asymmetric approach - the utilisation of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), suicide bombers, that sort of thing," he said.

"What we are attempting to do is use a far more intelligence-focused approach to the elimination of key Taliban leaders.

"We recognise that the (wholesale) eradication of the Taliban is not a sensible option. That alienates the public, locally and internationally.

"Therefore to attempt to dislocate the key Taliban leadership and attempt to drive a wedge between the irreconcilable, tier one Taliban leadership and the local potential Taliban fighters - that is the nature of the tactic we are following."..

1 Comments:

Blogger Babbling Brooks said...

I think the point is that the moniker "Taliban" is used to denote a whole spectrum of opponents. There are ideology-based Taliban, power-hungry apparatchik Taliban, and gun-for-hire farmers working as Taliban cannon-fodder. Killing some is more useful than killing others. Remember, some "Taliban" have already been turned to government supporters.

We just need to be a bit more specific in our labelling, and make sure we can distinguish the true enemy from the guy collecting a paycheque to feed his family because some well-meaning official has plowed his livelihood under the soil.

The way I see it, the objective here isn't to turn the country into a sterile wasteland - a "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" type of thing. Hearts & minds means we turn some without killing them.

5:53 p.m., March 22, 2007  

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