Taliban to extend attacks to Afghan north - report

[Aidoneus]

ISLAMABAD, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Remnants of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime have decided to extend their guerrilla attacks on the U.S.-led forces and their Afghan allies to the north of the country, a news report said on Sunday.

The Pakistani newspaper, The News, quoted a Taliban spokesman Mohammad Amin as saying the Taliban soldiers had staged some attacks on the U.S.-backed Afghan government forces in some northern provinces in recent weeks.

Amin said these guerrilla attacks would now be "stepped-up and spread to all of northern Afghanistan in the coming days and weeks".

Amin said the Taliban had named Mullah Mohammad Asim Muttaqi as its military commander for northern Faryab province bordering Turkmenistan and also appointed two deputies for him to intensify attacks against the forces of General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a senior commander in northern Afghanistan.

"All three have reached Faryab to organise resistance against Dostum and other pro-U.S. commanders," he said.

--snip--

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL87061.htm

[acmavm]

1. George and company did a real bang-up job in Afganistan, didn't

they? Just like in Iraq. They figure if you just bomb the shit out of them, that's all it takes.

Too stupid to understand that you'd better kill them ALL the first time, because if you don't, you have a nest of angry Moslems on your hands. Why is it that they don't understand that from the perspective of these people, we are aggressors who are invading their country. Why is it so hard for these jerks to understand that they are fighting to get us out of THEIR country. I am not a Taliban supporter by any means, but to me it is obvious that no one ever planned on what would happen after the intitial warfare ended. THEY WILL FIGHT BACK. Just like Iraq.

And the dumbasses forgot to put funding in the national budget for Afganistan. They only added it after it was pointed out to them. Obviously these people have serious attention deficit disorder.

[ewagner]

2. This is a rematch

The Taliban vs Dostum.

The Taliban originally drove Dostum out of Maza el Sherif in '95 or '96 but Dostum drove them out several months later and literally butchered the Taliban forces where they stood. Dostum and Hikmetyar (spelling) are two of the cruelest most barbaric warlords ever to inhabit the planet. In order to save his skin Karzi appointed Dostum as Deputy Secretary of Defense and conceded the province around Maza el Sherif to him.

In other words, we are now within weeks of restoring Afghanistan to exactly what it was in 1995. Fueding warlords, Islamic fundamentalist, haven for terrorists, world's largest supplier of heroin..

To the WH:

Nice work guys.

[IndianaGreen]

3. These are not "remnants"

If they are strong enough to take the war to the North, they are an effective fighting force, not some "remnant"!

[LoneStarLiberal]

4. From Mazar to Manhattan

Too bad for Afghanistan and the Afghan people that their country is too far from our international ADD-addled fixation right now. Afghanistan? Where is that? Is any of our oil under their sand?

Interesting but not surprising the Taliban would take the fight to Dostum in the north. Northern Afghanistan contains most of the country's mineral wealth (which gave Dostum a very powerful leg up in "negotiating" his position in the Karzai government) and it makes sense that the Taliban would want to destabilize this as much as possible.

Besides, the myth that the U.S. military campaign "drove off" the Taliban is just short of lunacy. We didn't drive them anywhere. We didn't decisively defeat them. They simply did what Afghans have been doing since the time of Alexander the Great: They changed clothes and went home when the odds where obviously against them. Great way to solve the problem!

Afghanistan is like Iraq which is like the whole diseased, stupid way in which we are "fighting" the war on terrorism. There is no substantive message in this war which is why we've been fighting it for almost two years now and seemingly have only managed to piss off even more people. This is fundamentally a war of ideologies. Our enemies have their ideological message down pat and it is part and parcel of their war. What is ours? "If you have oil you'd better step and fetch?" "Don't piss us off or we'll knock you into the Stone Age?"

The United States of America, a country that should have the most powerful message in the world to go to war with, has none today. Why? Because messages and ideology aren't part of the Machiavellian theory that our PNAC policy makers believe in and exercise.

We have not failed the war on terrorism. The PNAC policy makers have failed the war on terrorism. Our President has failed the war on terrorism by not being smart enough to know what these cretins are doing with our country. Shame on them all.

[ewagner]

5. Good insight lonestar

Summed it up well.

Have you read the book Taliban?

Your knowledge is (as well as those in the thread) is quite good.

[LoneStarLiberal]

6. Haven't read Taliban...

...but I have read his earlier book The Resurgence of Central Asia. I've been following the rise and fall of the Taliban since 1994, mainly through The Economist and Jane's Intelligence Review and whatever other sources I can get my hands on at the time.

Central Asia (all the former Soviet republics down to Pakistan) has always been an area of fascination for me. I had my heart set on going into the Peace Corps and trying for a spot in Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan before we began bombing Afghanistan and those programs were withdrawn; they are now open again and I'm thinking about going to one or the other (or possibly Kyrgyzstan) when I finish my PhD.

My overall interest is in civil war, conflict resolution, and peace studies. So Central Asia has been an area I've been drawn toward for years.

[dArKeR]

7. ‘Bolder’ Taliban steps up attacks - MSGOP

Taliban militants killed 10 policemen, including a police chief, in a province south of Kabul in the latest incident in a spate of violence that has claimed more than 90 lives in the past week, police said on Tuesday. The expanded attacks put more pressure than ever on a fragile U.S.-backed government struggling to rebuild a country following the ouster of the Islamic militia in late 2001.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/953849.asp?0cv=CB10