Ray

http://frontierpost.com.pk/

This is from the Frontier Post of Pakistan.

The Frontier (NWFP) is adjacent to Afghanistan and hence this requires attention.

One must be on the guard.

Confed999

The war isn't over, not by a long shot. I pray for the doom of these who wish to impose slavery on us all...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Ray

I am little concerned since the elections are due and the Taliban are quite capable of causing a flap.

Avenger

Yeah, but what we're talking about here is little more than a misfit band of raving idiots. Hopefully they'll perish in great numbers while failing to kill many (if any) of the good guys.

troung

Well the Taliban still have some major sales appeal with Afghani Pashtuns (the majority ethnic group) and Pakistani Pashtuns. Mostly the rural "red staters" but it gives them a base of support. But they will be stuck at being tribal bandits without a major scale cash infusion. The Taliban did not control 75% of Afghanistan because they were that damn good, just they had that damn much of a bankroll which made up for things. But we have the ultamite carrot (our big pockets) and a much more powerful stick (our military) then they could hope to match.

platinum786

troung has hit the nail on the ehad, the puhstoon connection to Taliban is tribal and religious, however bigger than that its finiancial and political.

If you can get these people rerepsented properly without taliban and flash a lill green....Taliban are as dead as the Dodo.

troung

Thanks

We got the big pockets to buy loyalty of warlords, we just need a better Pasthun front man. The hard part is to find a Pasthun with "street cred" and who we can place there yet without him being tainted by having been part of the Taliban. Kabul based mullahs were generally not as extreme as the Kandahar based ones yet they are all hard to sell to the NA and their base and of course USA public. The Northern Alliance didn't want an ex Taliban no matter how close to the center (out how far from the ultra far right) they were. The whole thing about Pakistan wanting Taliban "moderates" and the NA asking if they were "moderate" why were they part of the Taliban shows that.

Karzai is more or less a joke which no one there wants, kind of the man who would be king. He gave money to the Taliban, ended up in the Massoud run jail, ran to Pakistan, got booted out of Pakistan, and showed up the "fight" the Taliban only after 9-11. He doesn't even have the respect of the NA warlords much less "street cred" the Pasthuns or the nieghboring nations. He doesn't even have a real base (read: militia to call on). The big boys like Khan, Fahim and Dostum can call up big time militias.

We can kill the Taliban off just with how things are going. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan will no longer bankroll their operations which drops the weapons, bribes and amount of men they could try and keep the field. But a civil war with all the kids on the block and outside of the block could happen after we leave if we can't get every group to feel as if it is part of the government. Massoud had planned that when the Taliban were defeated he would share power wigth every ethnic group to end the civil war and leave no one out in the cold. We just have to rep the Pasthuns better

Bluesman

There will be no 'spring offensive' worthy of the name.

OPSTEMPO will increase, but there isn't enough coordination between enemy cells/units/organizations to synchronize ops.

Although I can only HOPE that we see large concentrations, long movements, and massive employment of weapons, because that works for US, and plays against their strengths.

So, as much as I would like for the last remnants to try to go out in a blaze of glory, I suspect that they will just continue to do what they do best, just more of it. They need to keep a force-in-being up in the hills to keep the war going on and on, and they're terrified of our firepower. So the War of the Mine and Booby-trap will continue.

And we'll just have to content ourselves with destroying them slowly and eventually, instead of one last great spasm.

But destroy them we will.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

speedracer

send out the bombers!

ChrisF202

Damn right on that, its only a matter of time. The Taliban and Al Qaeda forces have lost probably 100+ men for every one of our guys they kill, they cant have very many fighters left, probably 2 - 3,000 at most.

platinum786

To be honest, if the pashtun you find has a big enough stick, who cares wether the N.A like him or not, if this guy is big enough to take over himself (without being Taliban), and has US backing then N.A know they are not needed, so they will take any share of power given to them. You have tor ealise N.A are a small minority of Afghanistan.

troung

And we found a wimp who used to back the Taliban.

Having a lot of cred with the Pasthuns is hard to do without coming off as a "fundo" to us. And the ones with the big stick even if not Taliban (where on earth were they then in the 1990s ) would possible be HIA or just something else. I just guess it would be hard to find a Pashtun that would make everyone happy. I'm looking through my files to see if any top Taliban (Kabul based) fell out with them before hand.

But on the same hand those are the guys that fought alongside us and provide the forces we operate alongside. We supported Ali as he took over Jalalabad for example. And lets not get into Dostum, Fahim and Khan more or less doing as they please. But yet we don't want to cut them out as they between them have the largest force within the nation and external backing. Plus they did fight alongside of us to remove the Taliban.

I guess we need some sort of power sharing agreement between the major power brokers (not expats with no base like what happened in 2001 in Germany). But that would have to have so many minority rights as to offend the majority.

platinum786

my point is N.A need you more than you would need them, they would play ball, and Pushtoon player doesn't have to be backed 100% by them, it could be a guy they hate, coz they know when US forces stop backing them, they're nothing, even the Taliban had them stuck.

troung

Well we also need the NA forces to keep things somewhat in check. He have around 10k American troops there and there are a bunch of allied soldiers there as well. Yet we still use NA forces on combat operations. They are acting up because they dislike/don't respect Karzai and know he has no base of support. Pakistan does not like him either. He is not big in Pasthun areas. He is not the mayor of Kabul for nothing . And as of last "election" it was clear the entire NA leadership disliked him.

Hell we might have to let so called "moderate" Taliban more into things. The Kabul based leadership was more "moderate" then the Kandahar faction (which ran the show). Yet the NA is totally opposed to that, and our public might not like it either. But the NA is still of use to us and we don't want to lose them.

In the perfect world there would have been a high level Taliban defector (before 9-11) with sales appeal for many Pasthuns and at the least would get along with the NA. God what a cluster****.

The Taliban only had them stuck because of the money issue and of course Pakistan sent in guys to support the Taliban as well. Cut all of that out and one is back to same the Taliban which failed to take Kabul without external help (money to bribe Pasthun fighters). The first several pushes were crushed until Pakistan and Saudi Arabia flooded in money. Hell Pakistan had to set up the IEAAF and fly many of the planes. And these days as far as forces go the NA is pretty much the largest force within the nation.