Taliban attack logistic point in Afghanistan

NY Times:

A suicide bomber driving a pickup truck detonated his payload of explosives in a hotel parking lot used by NATO trucks, killing four Afghan drivers, injuring eight others and destroying 12 vehicles in Helmand Province on Friday night, Afghan officials said.

The attack is believed to be among the first in Afghanistan targeting a stationary convoy, and comes several weeks after Taliban leaders boldly threatened to unveil new tactics over the summer to counter an increase in American troops in this increasingly violent war.

The Taliban, who claimed responsibility for the attack in the northern area of Gereshk district, said the attack killed 33 security guards and burned 17 vehicles, mostly fuel tankers.

“The man who carried out the blessed duty against those who help the occupying troops was named Abdul Aziz from Helmand,” said a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi.

“In the future, we will continue to target convoys and those who escort and drive them,” he said.

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Actually the Taliban have always attacked logistics convoys, but they have changed their tactics from ambushes to large human bomb attacks. It is a change that has been forced on them by the failure of their previous tactic which led to unsustainable losses from the large ambushes. The ambushes were rarely successful and often led to casualty ratios of 100 to 1 against the Taliban.

The new tactic is not reversing the ratio, but it is less costly to the Taliban since they are losing a few human bombs in an attack rather than a hundred troops. The US and the Afghans will adapt to this new tactic and make it more difficult for the vehicle born human bombs to get near their targets. We were able to do that in Iraq and I think we can do it in Afghanistan. The "yield" to the Taliban from this attack seems rather small. They should be disappointed in the results. No one is going to confuse this attack with the Beirut barracks bombers or the Khobar Towers bombing.