Taliban Leadership Targeted

Special Ops forces in Afghanistan are targeting insurgent leaders with the goal of bringing the Taliban leadership to the bargaining table with the Afghan government.

About 130 important insurgent figures have been captured or killed in Afghanistan over the past 120 days, about the time that commanders turned their attention from the fight around Marja to a much more complex campaign around Kandahar, according to NATO military statistics. The targets have included Taliban shadow provincial governors and military commanders, as well as district-level financiers, trainers and bomb makers.

The missions aimed at Taliban leaders are to pressure some fighters to lay down their arms, as well as to demonstrate to mid- and higher-level commanders that reconciliation would be the wiser path.

Special Operations forces are carrying out an average of five raids a day against a constantly updated list of high-value targets, mostly in southern Afghanistan — the focus of the troop increase ordered by President Obama — but also in the east and the north.

Officials said that the specific person on the raid’s target list is found a little more than half the time, but that even when they miss the primary target, the raiders round up other insurgents, leading to another 500 suspects detained over the past four months.

One specific sign of damage to the insurgent hierarchy from the accelerated Special Operations missions is that replacements for midlevel Taliban leaders taken out of the fight are increasingly younger, dropping in average age to the mid-20s from the mid-40s, according to alliance reports.

A number of insurgent leaders also have left their provincial bases inside Afghanistan and sought refuge in Pakistan, officials said.

“We are seeing signs of damage to the insurgent leadership,” said one senior NATO official in Kabul. “There are some signs of fatigue.”

By: Shelldrake