Tallying more Taliban dead as Afghan army joins the battle

Sunday Telegraph:

The Taliban were out there, somewhere in the darkness to the north of the jagged peaks of Masum Gar, just the other side of the Arghandab river. They had fired one rocket. Now they were ready to fire again.

The light had faded about an hour earlier. Inside the compound only a few tiny chinks of light, spilling through the gaps in the doorway leading into the warren of vaulted underground cellars, betrayed the presence of the Afghan soldiers and their Canadian counterparts.

Suddenly, two huge explosions shook the night. And on the other side of the river to the north, where a moment earlier two men had been crouching down preparing the rocket, there was nothing left but the craters where the shells fired by the Leopard tank had detonated.

The Taliban are back. They were driven west from their traditional stronghold in the Panjvai area of southern Afghanistan by Afghan and Canadian troops in Operation Medusa three months ago. Now they have returned from neighbouring Helmand.

Afghan police and army commanders report that about 250 hard-core fighters have moved into the area, including men from Chechnya, Pakistan and Syria, and at least three suicide bombers are feared to be preparing attacks. The Afghans blame Pakistan for failing to secure its borders, but this was always the Taliban's heartland.

The Afghan army is determined to stop them and with the help of Canadian forces, it is finally taking the fight to the Taliban. Afghan and Nato forces are to launch Operation Falcon's Summit – or Baaz Tsuka – against them in the next few days in an attempt to show local people their determination to defeat the Taliban. The Sunday Telegraph travelled with units of the Afghan National Army (ANA) as it geared up for a new offensive.

About 250 Afghan soldiers and a similar number of Canadians are dug in at Masum Gar – 20 miles west of Kandahar and scene of the heaviest fighting during the opening phase of Medusa – bringing in tanks and setting up heavily armed observation posts on the hills around the forward operating base.

It was from one of those observation posts that Afghan soldiers managed to locate the Taliban fighters on Monday night, moments after a rocket had been fired in the direction of the main base.

In the radio room of the headquarters, inside an old house set into the ground at the heart of the base, French, Dari, Pashtun and English voices spilled out of the radio sets stacked on the trestle tables lining one wall. Bare bulbs cast a dim yellow light across the room.

Over the radio came the message from the observation post that two men had been seen on the far bank of the river, apparently setting up another rocket. The Afghan signaller pulled on a cigarette while his senior officer spoke over the radio to the men on the hill.

In the Canadian headquarters about 50 yards away, they were also mulling over the information. The fighting had emptied civilians from the area; there was little doubt that the men were Taliban. The tank fired once, missed, and fired again. The second time it hit its target.

Only four days earlier, 14 Taliban had been killed when they attempted to ambush a joint Afghan and Canadian patrol in countryside to the west. The Afghans and Canadians work closely together, but the Afghans have begun taking the lead on operations only recently.

...

There is more. The Taliban have to be the most inept ambushers in recent memory. The fact that they lost 13 in an ambush is almost a normal occurrence in this war. The Taliban are making it easier for the good guys to find them and destroy them. The purpose of patrols is to find the enemy and destroy them where they are found. By setting up an inept ambush the Taliban just make it easier to accomplish that mission. Let's hope that do not catch on too soon.