England's White Dragon

England's White Dragon
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Saturday 15 January 2011

Taliban wining the battle

Taliban strength is totally unaffected, just more lies by this British Government in coving up what’s really is going on in Afghanistan  

A massive effort by U.S. British and NATO forces in Afghanistan  including offensives in the insurgent heartland and targeted assassinations of rebel leaders has failed to dent Taliban numerical strength over this past year, according to military and diplomatic officials speaking to the London Times reporters.

A NATO official said this week that the alliance estimates the current number of insurgent fighters up to 25,000, confirming figures provided earlier by several military officers, diplomats and the London Times reports in Afghanistan.

That number is the same as a year ago, before the arrival of an additional 40,000 U.S. and allied troops and over 3000 British troops, and before the alliance launched a massive campaign to restore the corrupted government control in Helmand province and around the city of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan.
The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has kept official figures of enemy strength under wraps throughout the nine-year war going into ten years? But non-U.S. military assessments have tracked the growth of the Taliban from about 500 armed fighters in 1993 to 25,000 in early 2010.
"These are only rough estimates, because the Taliban are not just standing around to be counted," said the NATO official who could not be named in line with standing regulations.
The Taliban are pitted against over 140,000 ISAF troops  two-thirds of them Americans, and over 200,000 members of the government's security forces plus British troops there are nearly 500,000 half a million troops in Afghanistan that still can’t sort out the Taliban in ten years of fighting.

This gives the allies a numerical advantage of over 12:1 which is one of the highest such ratios in modern guerrilla wars. At the height of the Vietnam War, the U.S. and its allies had an advantage of "between" 4-5 to 1 over their Communist foes and we all no far too well the ending results there?
President Obama has doubled U.S. troop numbers since taking office two years ago, hoping to inflict major losses on the Taliban before a planned pullout starting this year which is becoming far less likely. The intensity of combat has sharply escalated as a result, with both civilian and military casualties hitting record highs.
Despite the Taliban's ability to make up for battlefield losses, U.S. and NATO commanders still insist they are making real progress throughout the country. They say hundreds of Taliban have been killed, and others forced to abandon the movement's strongholds in southern and eastern provinces yet we have seen the Taliban’s number rising not falling as we are being lead to believe.
Meanwhile, the training of a 300,000-strong government security force is said to be going according to the plan adopted at NATO's summit in November. It calls for a gradual hand-over to already corrupted Afghan troops and initial withdrawals of foreign forces by the middle of this year, concluding in 2014, when security throughout the nation will be transferred entirely to government forces.
"As we look back on 2010, we see that we have made hard-fought progress," NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the London Times. "Our strategy is sound and we have in place the necessary resources to accomplish it." When asked by the London Times do you really think you have accomplished anything, when in fact there is rise in the Taliban’s numbers not a decline, he declined to comment.
Military experts generally agree that international troops have seized the initiative in the war but the battle is a far way from being won, if it can ever really be won?
In a telephone interview General Sir Michael Black-Feather KCMG the English first minister said "This year will be clearly crucial as the Taliban will try to regain lost territory around Kandahar and in Helmand, and we'll shall see if they can make up their losses, "We will also see if  the British government have been able to create the institutions of government, police and the army and if they can actually sustain themselves which I very much doubt, the whole country from its government, police, army is corrupted to the little man in the street and I gave Gordon Brown three years ago the opportunity to end this war and have peace but the offer was declined, asked what the offer was Sir Michael said he had no comment on the subject as it was still possible if this present British government takes the initiative.
Other analysts also like Sir Michael have cautioned? that the gains could be reversed because the Taliban have not been defeated, but have simply retreated in the face of superior forces. Employing classic guerrilla tactics they melted away into other areas, spreading the rebellion into new parts of the country like a cancer and supported Sir Michael’s statement.
Jovo Kapicic, a retired Montenegrin General who fought in the first modern day guerrilla war in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II said it was never a problem for insurgents to make up losses in manpower despite massive losses; I would have to agree with Sir Michael and the other analyst’s statements.
"Guerrillas who enjoy the support of the population can always bounce back," he added.
The Taliban are enjoying growing support among the population, which is exhausted by nine years of war and increasingly and are opposed to the foreign troop’s presence in their country.
"Many people now perceive ISAF as an occupying force," said Anne Jones, a humanitarian activist and author who has lived in Afghanistan. "(They) are no longer part of the solution, they have become the problem."
Afghanistan also remains mired in poverty, with the legitimacy of its graft-ridden, Western-backed government further undermined after two very questionable elections in 2010 conditions that experts in guerrilla warfare like Sir Michael and General Kapicic say make a perfect breeding ground for anti-government insurgency.
Other specialists note that NATO's announcement regarding withdrawal by 2014 has locked the alliance into an endgame that limits its options. This gives the Taliban a clear goal: survival over the next 18-24 months, when the drawdown will be well under way.
Nate Hughes, director of military analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence company, said the U.S. British and NATO strategy to weaken the rebels and force them to negotiate with the government was very unlikely to succeed in time, he I would have to agree with both the remakes made by Sir Michael and General Kapicic and his other colleagues.
"The West certainly doesn't have the staying power to defeat the Taliban and reshape the country by 2014, he said. “The Taliban can fall back and basically wait out the NATO forces and when they go move back in but stronger, which means the ten plus years of war and loss of life will be, and is as it is now a total waste.  

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