Taliban losing hearts minds and pocketbooks

Strategy Page:

An example of how development projects can defeat terrorism occurred in western Afghanistan recently. On March 24th, in Farah province, some Taliban gunmen attacked a group of Afghan and Indian engineers examining a dam, in preparation for work to be done on the facility. Hearing the gunfire, over a hundred armed men came from a nearby village and attacked the Taliban, killing three of them and driving the rest away. One villager was wounded. The villagers knew that the engineering team meant jobs, and economic progress for them. All the Taliban brought was bullets and threats.



The gun battle at the dam was not unique. Since late last year, when more villagers got angry at Taliban attacks on their new schools (which weren't religious schools, the only kind approved by the Taliban), and began meeting the Taliban with gunfire, there has been increasing armed resistance to Taliban gunmen....

The Taliban are losing the war in Afghanistan. They are not very intelligent to begin with. Then they alienate the population and on top of that when they find themselves under attack from superior forces they stand an fight rather than running away to fight another day. If they did not have their sanctuary in Pakistan they would have been completely destroyed by now.