Afghans fight invasion of Pakistan Taliban

NY Times:

After five days of fighting, the Afghan border police, supported by American helicopters, repelled a force of Pakistani Taliban who appeared to have crossed the border to try to carve out a new haven in Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province, according to Afghan officials.

Meanwhile, in Paktia Province in southeastern Afghanistan, the Taliban ambushed a joint force of Afghan National Police and NATO soldiers, killing at least five Afghan police officers, provincial police officials said.

The attacks not only indicated that the summer fighting season had begun, but also provided a reminder of the permeability of Afghanistan’s rugged border, which is difficult for NATO vehicles to patrol but well traveled on foot and donkey by insurgents who know their way over the high mountain passes.

In Nuristan, the fighting in the Barg-e-Matal district ended with two border police officers dead, three wounded, at least three houses burned and at least 25 Taliban dead, said Gen. Zaman Mamozai, the head of the Afghan Border Police for the country’s eastern region.

An American military spokesman in Jalalabad, Maj. T. G. Taylor, confirmed that helicopters had provided some close air support overnight.

“Large numbers of Taliban” were involved in the fight, General Mamozai said. He estimated that more than 600 insurgents were in the area. He said they came to Barg-e-Matal from the Pakistani areas of Swat, Bajaur and Chitral and included Chechens and Arabs as well as Pakistanis.

Though it was impossible to confirm the presence of such a large contingent of Pakistani Taliban and fighters with Al Qaeda, the fighting underscored the difficulty of denying havens to militant groups when borders are so permeable. Many of the Pakistani Taliban and others appeared to have felt that they could no longer operate freely in some of their bases in Pakistan’s tribal areas because of military operations by the Pakistani Army, and so were apparently testing nearby areas where there is no little or no presence of NATO troops.

...

I am skeptical that such a large force could enter the country undetected even if the borders are difficult to control. US aircraft should be able to find and destroy such a large force. I think the fact that we sent choppers to deal with the units in contact with the Afghan units suggest they were fighting a platoon size force.

This, of course, assumes that Gen. McChrystal has not precluded sending A-10s to wipe out larger Taliban forces.

It is actually a good sign that the Afghan police units held their ground and with the help of air support were able to defeat an invading Taliban force.

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