DoDBuzz: Taliban Threaten Kabul

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Taliban Threaten Kabul
By Greg Grant Monday, December 8th, 2008 4:22 pm
Posted in Policy, Uncategorized

The Army’s 3rd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division will arrive next month in Afghanistan, the vanguard of an anticipated 20,000 troop plus-up in the country over the next year. The new troops will be arriving none too soon.

In a sign of how grim the situation is, the brigade is not being sent down south to reinforce coalition troops in embattled Kandahar and Helmand provinces, scene of the heaviest fighting over the past two years, nor is it being sent to the eastern border, where a remote American outpost at Wanat was nearly overrun by a Taliban attack in July.

Instead, the bulk of the brigade will deploy directly south and west of Kabul, to safeguard the capital, according to a New York Times report over the weeekend.

It’s a stunning acknowledgement of the growing Taliban strength and the threat they pose to the vital ring road, the only real highway, that connects Kabul to the embattled south. Roadside bomb attacks and ambushes on the southern stretches of Highway 1 have jumped in recent months. A fuel convoy was shot-up there last summer, some of the drivers were dragged out and beheaded. A patrol of New York and Michigan National Guard soldiers was ambushed in the area during the summer. The bodies were reportedly dismembered and had organs removed.

A new report from Kabul based researchers from France’s International Council on Security and Development, formerly the Senlis Council, says the Taliban “are closing a noose around the city and establishing bases close to the city from which to launch attacks inside it.” While Senlis council reports tend to be a bit hyperbolic, the report correctly identifies the threat the Taliban now pose to lines-of-communication in Afghanistan. It highlights Logar and Wardak provinces as being particularly dangerous and says the Taliban has a “permanent presence” in 72 percent of the country (although the notion of permanent presence in a guerrilla war is rather tough to define).


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