A bad year for the Taliban?

Strategy Page:

The Taliban are having a bad Winter. The Pakistani army offensive against the Pakistani Taliban has cut off a source of reinforcements. Battles on the border, as Afghan and NATO troops catch Taliban crossing, have declined over a third. As a result, more foreign fighters are being found among dead and captured Taliban. The manpower shortage has caused the Taliban to abandon areas they had long maintained a presence in, particularly in Helmand province. Police there captured most of a terror cell that had been responsible for three bombings. The Taliban are also showing signs of being terrorized themselves. An example was a recent demand by Taliban around Kandahar, that cell phone companies shut down service at night. If not, the Taliban will attack cell phone towers. The Taliban believe the Americans use cell phone signals to track the Taliban at night, and guide smart bombs to where the Taliban are sleeping. Few in the Taliban seem to understand how ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) works, so these threats are simply a desperate reaction to many night time smart bomb attacks, or police raids, on houses where Taliban were spending the night. The Taliban themselves make heavy use of cell phones, at least in the few areas (mainly the large cities, like Kandahar) where there is cell phone service. The Taliban see such "Yankee Magic" as another sign that the Americans are in league with the devil.

A senior Taliban leader Mullah Obaidullah Akhund (Defense Minister when the Taliban ran the country) was captured crossing the Pakistani border. Akhund had been travelling to Pakistani tribal and terror leaders, seeking money for the Afghan Taliban.

In the U.S., intelligence officials told Congress that the Taliban has freedom of movement in about ten percent of the country. Another 30 percent is under control of the central government, and 60 percent is controlled by various local leaders. This is normal for Afghanistan, where, for centuries, the tribes picked one of their more powerful chiefs to be "king" of the country. The king had two chores; deal with the foreigners, and leave the tribes alone. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the central government has expanded its control, at least by historical standards.

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This last quoted paragraph gets to the heart of the confusion over how things are goin in Afghanistan. The Cassandras in the media seize on the "30 percent is under the control of the central government" as a sign of failure rather than putting it in context as the Strategy Page does. That is bad reporting. The job of reporters is to put facts in perspective. Unfortunately too many reporters have a warped perspective when it comes to warfare.