Task force tries to supplant Taliban in info war

[unhappycamper]

Spc. Michael Holt of 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, Task Force Legion, prepares to mount his Stryker before a mission in Maywand district, Kandahar. The red sign on the Stryker is a general warning in Pashto to keep one’s distance.


Task force tries to supplant Taliban in info war
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 23, 2009 20:41:23 EST

HUTAL, Afghanistan — The denizens of this dusty market town had never seen anything like the sight that greeted them at midday Oct. 12.

The previous day, a handful of insurgents in a nearby village had made the mistake of shooting at a pair of U.S. OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters. Stryker-borne infantry rushed to the scene and, together with the helicopters, engaged the Taliban, killing one, wounding another, who got away, and detaining three more.

Now, rolling slowly down the main street of the bazaar, came five Stryker vehicles with the weapons captured in that fight tied to their fronts on full display for the locals.

As a crowd gathered to watch the spectacle, loudspeakers mounted on a Stryker rammed the message home: “We took these weapons from the dead Taliban that decided to fight Task Force Legion, and we took them from the cowardly Taliban that surrendered to us and are currently sitting in our jail.”

The in-your-face challenge to the insurgents was unprecedented. For years the Taliban had held sway here in the Maywand district on the western edge of Kandahar province. Small, ineffectual coalition forces and their Afghan counterparts came and went, but the Taliban remained, growing stronger year by year. No one could even remember the last time the coalition had killed an insurgent in Maywand. But now, here were the Americans calling out the Taliban, taunting them, questioning their manhood.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/army_info_ops_112309w/