Back in Kabul
But the focus is on the South. The huge Operation Khanjar in Helmand is a pre-election clean out of the Taliban strongholds and frustratingly my colleague down there with British troops can’t tell me what’s going on. (Oh and, incidentally, it’s officially not a ‘surge’ but an ‘uplift’, but let’s not get into PR semantics here)
Casualties and deaths aside, it seems like the thousands of US, UK and various other not often mentioned nations (Canadians being the stalwart fighters down there) aren’t encountering much resistance. However, it seems to me that, if I were Terry Taliban, I’d be of the opinion that a tactical retreat to watch and learn from the new ISAF tactics would reap far more benefits than an out and out fight.
I suspect if the elections pass relatively peacefully (although there’s always the danger of a highly planned attack concentrated specifically on this period) we’ll see lower levels of violence for the whole of the winter. But then a sharp upturn, which may have dire political consequences. You can’t push without expecting to be pushed back.
The hope, of course, is that ISAF troops hold the areas successfully, something that certainly British troops have not been able to do, and convince local Afghans and potentially the Taliban among them that, hey, this peace thing’s not so bad. Perhaps we could roll with it a little longer?
In short, Killing Taliban is officially supposed to now take a back seat to protecting Afghans.
Anyhow, the new official ‘Tactical Guidance’ will be revealed by new ISAF commander, Stanley McChrystal on Monday at a press conference I’m hoping to tweet (both for @ruthowen and @natochannel) here in Kabul. But I much prefer the informal name given to these new ‘be nice’ tactics coined by Brig Gen Larry Nicholson: ‘drink tea and eat goat’. You can see Larry doing a shop here.
