Taliban PR offensive in Kandahar area fizziles

CNN:

Two Afghan soldiers and at least 23 militants were killed Wednesday during a military operation to push out Taliban rebels from several villages in south Afghanistan, the country's defense ministry said.

Afghan troops, backed by Canadian forces, targeted villages in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province, where 400 militants escaped from prison in a jailbreak Friday.

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Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said thousands of soldiers and police officers -- with reinforcements from the capital city of Kabul -- began moving into Arghandab Wednesday morning.

"This clearing operation is a response to a direct Taliban threat to the people of Arghandab district, where insurgents have forced hundreds of innocent Afghans to flee their homes," a statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. "The operation is expected to be completed within the next three days."

The two Afghan soldiers were killed in a gun battle with three Taliban fighters, the defense ministry said. A NATO air raid in the district killed 20 other militants, the ministry said.

Even with the operation under way, NATO said it had seen no evidence of an increased Taliban presence in the region. Watch former CIA boss talk about Taliban activity »

"The scale of the challenge is currently unknown," ISAF spokesman Mark Laity said. "What we failed to find is the large grouping [of militants] that some people claimed."

Laity said the reports of militants overrunning villages was Taliban "propaganda precisely to scare people."

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An AP report quotes Canadian troops as finding "no obvious signs" of enemy activity. It is important to remember that this enemy has little military capacity so it tries to leverage its meager capacity with a strong public relations effort. That appears to be what has happened in this part of Afghanistan. If the media starts to recognize this fact, the enemy will have lost half its war effort.