Destroying the Taliban's command and control
BBC:
The battles may be raging in Helmand province, the suicide and roadside bombs are killing people across the country, but the Taleban have been hit hard by Nato's spring offensive.
They admit themselves that the targeted killings of some senior commanders took the thrust out of their own planned spring attacks.
And their biggest loss was Mullah Dadullah - a ruthless military commander whose brutality repulsed even his own fellow Taleban leaders.
The British Special Boat Service (SBS) killed him in Helmand in May after a raid on a compound where his associates were meeting.
There are many stories of betrayal, of his false leg being stolen so he couldn't get away, of his body being recovered from a river by his followers, but it seems careful intelligence-gathering and a lot of luck culminated in the removal of one of the most wanted Taleban targets.
And it came on the back of two other success stories for foreign forces.
First the killing of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, reportedly the head of Taleban operations in southern Afghanistan, in December last year in an air strike and then the arrest of Mullah Obaidullah, the former Taleban defence minister, who is now believed to be in Pakistani custody.
"I think it is a big achievement on the part of the US and its allies, because they have been able to eliminate top commanders," says Rahimullah Yusufzai, a journalist based in Pakistan who knows the Taleban well.
"The Americans, Nato and Pakistani forces will now try to get the remaining people on the Taleban council, and if that can be done then the back of Taleban resistance would be broken."
And the commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), the American general Dan McNeill, certainly believes they are on the right track.
"We're having success in killing or capturing mid or lower level battle field type leaders, I think we're having pretty good success there," he said.
"It causes some disruption in their ability to prosecute action, and we think as long as we continue with that technique we will severely disrupt them."
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But it's striking to the heart of the organisation that intelligence sources believe is the only way of defeating the insurgency.
Killing high level commanders will clearly have an impact on the Taleban's direction, tactics and morale, and the international strategy is to use this to persuade less extremist Taleban fighters to give up their guns and go over to the other side - that of the government.
...
War are won by persuading the enemy his cause is hopeless. The Taliban cause has always been hopeless since 9-11 when the US and the rest of the world turned its attention to the despotic regime. In 2006 the Taliban tried to go back to the tactics that had been successful against the Soviets and the British before them, of ambushing exposed units and cutting them off from outside support. US technology has severely limited the effectiveness of this approach. Using drones and having fixed wing aircraft on call within minutes has led to the destruction of the ambushing forces in most cases.
The Taliban's attempt to use human bomb attacks in 2007 has also been ineffective against military operations, and has in many cases turned civilians against the Taliban. The desperation of the Taliban in using this tactic is suggested by their sends a six year old to bomb and Afghan army check point. Using kids is not only in humane, it is the work of a defeated idea.
A decapitation strategy against insurgencies has been effectively used in the past. Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace gives several examples.
POSTED BY MERV AT 3:56 PM
LABELS: AFGHANISTAN, TALIBAN
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