Taliban lower their flags around Kandahar, but not their ambitions

NY Times:

The white flags of the Taliban no longer fly from neighborhoods in Kandahar City, as they did in some areas only two weeks ago, replaced instead by the red, black and green Afghan colors.

But if the Taliban have been driven further underground, there has been no significant let-up in their campaign of terror and assassination against anyone connected with the government or foreign forces.

The long-delayed push by NATO forces has finally come to town, in fits and starts, and with mixed results. “The deliberate campaign has begun in Kandahar,” Gen. David A. Petraeus, the NATO commander, said on Aug. 31. “In some areas the Taliban momentum has reversed, but there’s clearly a lot more work to be done.”

Several times a day lately, mostly in rural districts just outside the city, there has been the distinct metallic vomiting sound of an American A-10 Warthog attack plane blasting a target with its cannon, which fires 70 30-millimeter shells a second. Fighting in those rural areas has been intense, sometimes with heavy casualties for American troops and Taliban fighters. Inside this city of half a million, the traditional home of the Taliban, though, the coalition’s fight has been much more low-key.

Most of the recent effort has focused on the Mehlajat area, a semi-rural zone in the southwest of the city, and the adjacent District 6. It is a part of Kandahar that bedeviled the Soviets during their occupation, and until a recent joint military operation there, it was the Taliban’s most important redoubt within city limits.

The area was notorious as a place where the police were afraid to patrol and death sentences were handed out by Taliban courts. Hostages were chained to trees for days on end, and government employees hung from poles. The Taliban’s white flag flew from many of the mud-walled homes, surrounded by dense cornfields and pomegranate orchards laced with twisting lanes and canals, and heavily booby-trapped.

A five-day operation that concluded Aug. 31, mounted at the insistence of the Afghan authorities but backed up by American troops, succeeded in routing the Taliban from the area without a single civilian casualty. Nor was there a single Taliban casualty, and only 21 Taliban suspects were confirmed as captured, according to American officials.

...

The operation in Mehlajat has three companies of American troops hunkered down in the fields and orchards, patrolling on foot. The Afghans are patrolling on foot with them, and even sleeping in the open.

Colonel Qadim is the head of what will become the new Police Substation 15, which at the moment consists of a semicircular trench with an orchard wall at its back and fields of corn and okra in front of it. While the Afghans took a break at sunset to eat their iftar meal on Monday, marking the end of the day’s fasting for Ramadan, American soldiers took up prone positions atop the ditch’s berm, pulling security for them.

...

People in the area greeted the troops with friendly waves. “They were truly terrorized before,” said Capt. Bradley Rudy, who heads an infantry company that was also part of the operation. “They’re just really glad we’re here now and staying.”

...

There is more.

The Taliban are obviously in retreat from this area into areas they deem safer. They will attempt to attack if they see an opportunity, but their primary objective at this point has to be finding a sanctuary to hide until the NATO forces move there too.

While the story gives a descriptive sound to the A-10 cannons, if you are one of the friendly troops hearing that sound "vomit" is not the first thing that comes to mind. In this war the A-10 has been one of the most effective manned combat aircraft in our inventory. It is ideal for attacking Taliban positions and makes it difficult for the enemy to sustain operations unless they use human shields.

I think the story gives a pretty good preview as to how operations will unfold as the troops move in on Kandahar.