Taliban fear of cell towers

LA Times Editorial:

The Taliban made good on its outlandish threat to blow up Afghan cellphone towers it (correctly) believes are being used by Western intelligence to target insurgents. Its success Friday in blowing up a telecommunications tower in Kandahar province, the traditional Taliban stronghold, raises the question: Who will this hurt more, the Afghan people or the Taliban itself?

In Afghanistan, as in much of the Third World, cellphones are far more crucial than in the U.S. Where land lines and banking are rudimentary, cellphones permit communication and commerce and are used to transfer money. Afghanistan has 3.8 million subscribers -- about 12% of the population. When the Taliban issued its ultimatum this week, giving the country's four cellphone providers three days to shut down their towers every night or see them destroyed, some Westerners wondered whether the insurgents were technologically impaired by their madrasa educations. Were they so ignorant not to know to pull the batteries out of their phones to thwart tracing, or so cash-strapped they can't afford to change phone numbers every 48 hours, as the more competent of their terrorist brethren are known to do? Militarily, wouldn't the loss of cellphone service hurt their own ability to communicate? After all, the insurgents have used cellphones to extort ransoms, receive payoffs and demand better media coverage, as well as to coordinate attacks.

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The question is, does the Taliban have to win hearts and minds to prevail in Afghanistan, or can it succeed simply by driving the foreigners out? If it cares about cultivating public support, then messing with people's beloved cellphones is a strategic mistake. But what if its strategy is to terrorize and intimidate the Afghan people, make Karzai and the West look impotent, sabotage progress and wear out Western patience? Will the Afghan people submit? Are their cellphones worth fighting for?

The Times overlooks an obvious problem with the Taliban cell phone strategy. Insurgents like the Taliban survive because they have the advantage of the ambiguity of the time and place they will attack. Hitting the cell phone towers obviously gives up that advantage as to the place and since they are limited to attacking at night it makes the time less ambiguous. We already have an advantage of fighting at night because of our equipment, which means that with a careful analysis of avenues of approach to the towers, it should not be that difficult to set up an ambush to destroy the attackers.