Pakistan pushes into Orakzai tribal area

Reuters:

Pakistani security forces backed by tanks and artillery attacked Taliban positions in the northwest of the country, killing 22 militants, a senior police official on Monday.

...

Fighting erupted on Sunday night after an assault on militants in the village of Shahukhel, which borders the Taliban stronghold of Orakzai tribal region.

"There has been fierce fighting throughout the night. Militants fired rocket propelled grenades while troops responded with artillery and tank fire," local police official Fareed Khattak told Reuters.

"We have a figure of 22 militants dead and 14 arrested."

...

Khattak said forces had entered the lawless Orakzai region where many Taliban insurgents had fled. "Now helicopter gunships are striking Taliban hideouts in the agency," he said.

A Taliban spokesman in Orakzai, Zia-ur-Rehman, said both sides suffered heavy casualties in the clashes.

...


The Pakistan army has the Taliban in a mismatch in this battle. The Taliban are a poorly trained light infantry trying to counter tanks and artillery with RPGs. That is a fight the Pakistan army should win every time. In fact, it was a big mistake for the Taliban to even give battle in this particular fight.

Insurgency warfare strategy would dictate that the Taliban should retreat and try to fight under more favorable circumstances. It could be that the army has put the Taliban in a position where they cannot retreat, but the article does not give enough detail to determine that.

The Pakistan army is demonstrating the effectiveness of having a high force to space ratio in this current campaign. Obama should take notice and provide the US with additional forces to defeat the enemy in Afghanistan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more