Who not to listen to

'Afghan and western forces in the country have been facing a resurgent Taleban over the past year.

Earlier the American Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told a US senate committee that the Taleban had regained control of 10% of Afghanistan, six years after they were ousted from power.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7268564.stm

Behind the recitation of various facts, two messages are delivered by this BBC 'report'. First, the Taleban are regaining ground in Afghanistan. Second, the Taleban is resurgent. Both of these are crap.

Look at a map of Afghanistan. The Pashto areas along the border of Pakistan comprise between a third and a quarter of Afghanistans area. At the beginning of the campaigns in Afghanistan, most of those Pashto areas were hostile to the NATO forces. So you could say at least 33% of Afghanistan was Taleban territory. Add to that wild lawless areas like Helmand and Kandahar provinces, and probably in excess of 40% of Afghanistan was Taleban controlled. If thats down to 10% it represents a massive win for NATO. Not only that, but with the more than doubling of NATO presence in Helmand, which up until now the British have tried to control with tiny forces, the prospects for the Taleban in the lowlands is very poor indeed. The US Marine Corps units coming to Helmand are veterans of Iraq, competent, heavily armed and very very bad news for the Taleban newbies. And newbies they are. The attrition rate of Taleban grunts is stupendous. Despite the frothy fountain of jihadis coming out of Pakistani madrassahs, they can't keep up with the terribly high attrition rate inflicted on them by NATO. Although the leaders of outfits are often veterans, many of the Taleban soldiery are first mission greenhorns. That means they are rubbish in a fight, and very likely to do stupid things that will get them (and their comrades) killed.

Indeed, it is getting harder and harder for the Taleban to recruit even in the border areas of Pakistan. Only the foolhardiest and stupidest volunteer. Despite the difficulties NATO has in covering such an enormous area, it is still highly capable of inflicting massive casualties on the enemy given even a small window of opportunity to do so. The only thing the jihadis can hope for is that NATO will get bored and go home. What keeps them in the game is money from Heroin, and the abysmal ignorance of the folks up in the mountains of the NWFP. The latter can be gauged from the comment of a recent failed suicide bomber, who said he was shocked when he walked over the border and an Afghan policemen said 'Allahu Akhbar' to him. He thought the Afghans were Christians! At that point, he unbuckled his suicide belt and handed it to the policemen (who was probably somewhat taken aback).

I do have to call into question somewhat the idea of taking every mountain and valley of the border areas. Not only are these places of no economic value, no government has ever bothered to try to govern them. They just make deals with them. You don't come down here and raid and plunder, and we don't come up there and blow up all your houses in the middle of winter. Many many of the tiny tribes in the high valleys will never accept rule from Kabul, be it ever so Islamic. So don't try. Just make it clear that the penalty for harbouring Arab or Uzbeck or Egyptian terrorists is Armaggeddon. You may need to demonstrate this in a few places pour encourager les autres, but once word gets around, it should work nicely. Saying that, even the current NATO strategy stands a very good chance of working in a country totally sick of war.