Mullah Omar takes charge of Afghan Taliban

Wall Street Journal:

Mullah Omar, supreme leader of the Taliban, is reasserting direct control over the militant group's loose-knit insurgency in Afghanistan, ordering attacks and shuffling field commanders in preparation for the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. troops, according to U.S. officials and insurgents in Afghanistan.

Until recently, the ground-level conduct of the Taliban's war against the U.S.-led coalition has been left to local commanders acting on their own. Mr. Omar, who heads a Taliban leadership council called the Quetta "shura" -- named after the city in southeast Pakistan where it is believed to be based -- has typically focused on choosing Taliban leaders and funneling money, religious guidance and strategic advice to fighters.

But since the start of the year, through his direct lieutenants, Mr. Omar has ordered a spate of suicide bombings and assassinations in southern and eastern Afghanistan that presage a bloody phase to come in the Afghan war, according to U.S. officials and Afghan insurgents.

One target was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who survived a gun and rocket attack on his motorcade in eastern Afghanistan on May 18. Qari Sayed Ahmad, a moderate cleric, was gunned down outside his home in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in April. The Taliban took credit for the attack, and a midlevel Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan said in a telephone interview that the assassination was carried out on orders from one of Mr. Omar's lieutenants.

In another unusual attack in mid-May, nearly a dozen suicide bombers struck targets in the provincial capital of Khost in eastern Afghanistan, leaving at least 12 dead, not including the bombers. U.S. officials say the attack was ordered by the Quetta shura.

On Sunday, a rocket attack on the U.S.'s Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan killed two soldiers and wounded six other Americans, including two civilians, the military said. No one claimed credit for the attack.

"This is Quetta's answer to Obama's surge," said a senior member of a militant network led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an independent Afghan warlord who fights alongside the Taliban. He was referring to plans by the administration of President Barack Obama to send an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan over the next few months. The Quetta "are not ready to lay down their weapons," he said in an interview in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

Before 2001, the Taliban in Afghanistan was highly centralized, but it quickly fragmented when coalition forces invaded and has run as a series of affiliated but largely independent factions since then, fighting piecemeal against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and Pakistani troops in northwestern Pakistan. Estimates of the number of Taliban vary, but there are believed to be tens of thousands.

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If the Taliban return to centralized control that would probably give the US another advantage. They were pretty terrible in 2001 and only al Qaeda's foreign fighters attempted to hold ground when under attack. The main Taliban were back pedaling when the bombs got oriented on their defensive lines. Mullah Omar is not strategic genius and the attacks described in the article don't appear to have much strategic coherence.

So, who is in charge of our offensive in Quetta?