Taliban Who?
271 words.
I am shocked — shocked! — that nobody is talking about Katie. (At least nobody in my daily reads.) Perhaps it’s because she behaves just like any other generic anchor chained to a news entertainment business that’s desperate for ratings.
Anyway, one of the stories on Katie’s first broadcast featured a reporter hanging out with some Taliban fighters who had apparently “taken back” the town of Ghazni from Coalition forces (there was no mention of exactly how they had taken it back). That story and others on the broadcast strongly implied that the NATO war effort in Afghanistan was unraveling.
This report from Bill Roggio, however, should sufficiently challenge any notion that NATO is “losing” in Afghanistan. In a nutshell, some 200 or so Taliban fighters were killed over the weekend in the Kandahar province, while NATO losses amounted to about 5 (Canadians). Not exactly what I’d call an unraveling situation.
From these two stories and a map, we can conclude that Taliban forces are simply moving to locations where there aren’t currently any NATO operations, then they bring in some cameras to claim a “victory.” Meanwhile, wherever they actually choose to fight with NATO forces, they, um, get killed. A lot. To the tune of nearly 1,400 Taliban deaths so far in 2006.
Unfortunately, just across the border, Roggio reports that the remnants of the Taliban have negotiated a deal with the Pakistani government to control the tribal areas known as “Waziristan,” from which they can effectively operate against NATO with impunity. Perhaps we should start working on our own deal with the Pakistani government-a deal to level that area.
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