NATO plans to remove Taliban from village

Reuters/Washington Post:

The NATO commander in Afghanistan vowed on Saturday to kick the Taliban out of a key southern town and reinstate tribal elders who struck a peace deal with foreign troops.

Taliban fighters overran Musa Qala in the drug heartland of Helmand province on Thursday night, seizing the district administration office and police headquarters.

When NATO troops ran into bloodier than expected fighting in southern Afghanistan late last year, British commanders struck a deal with tribal elders in the town to withdraw if the Taliban were also kept out.

NATO chief British General David Richards said locals had forcibly disarmed the Taliban, saying they had now returned seeking revenge.

"What is most important to me, and I've spoken to President (Hamid) Karzai about this, is that we look after those very brave people who had the courage to stand up to some pretty vicious hoods that now are intimidating them," Richards said.

"We will put the tribal elders back in control of Musa Qala and we will kick the Taliban out and defeat them," Richards said at the headquarters of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.

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What troubles me is that anyone thought they could trust the Taliban to honor their word. The Taliban are too weak to hold the town and they know it. They hope to weaken NATO and others by forcing them to garrison troops in the town which will degrade our ability to mass forces against them in other areas. The weakness in this Taliban strategy is that it is not the mass forces that are destroying their efforts but the ability to bring superior fire power to the fight one troops are engaged with the Taliban.