Taliban Routed In Southern Afghanistan

NATO is reporting success in a series of recent operations aimed at insurgents in Kandahar province.

U.S. and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of the insurgency’s base of Kandahar province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters to flee strongholds they have held for years in the face of the buildup of U.S. forces, NATO commanders and local Afghan officials said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 U.S. and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled for years.

Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy – like a small cruise missile – and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said.

NATO commanders are careful not to overstate their successes – they acknowledge they made that mistake earlier in the year when they undertook a high-profile operation against Marjah that did not produce lasting gains. But they say they are making “deliberate progress” and have seized the initiative from the insurgents.

Western and Afghan civilian officials are more outspoken, saying that heavy losses for the Taliban have sapped the momentum the insurgency had in the area. Unlike the Marjah operation, they say, the one in Kandahar is a comprehensive civil and military effort that is changing the public mood as well as improving security.

“We now have the initiative. We have created momentum,” said Major-General Nick Carter, the British commander of the NATO coalition forces in southern Afghanistan, who has overseen the Kandahar operation for the past year. “It is everything put together in terms of the effort that has gone in over the last 18 months, and it is undoubtedly having an impact.”

By: Shelldrake