This Month in Afghanistan

December in Afghanistan has been a tough fight for a winter month. This is not the fighting season in Afghanistan and neither side seems to have let up.

A great deal of fighting focused in Helmand province with 17 U.S. KIA and 58 Taliban. Helmand is a stronghold of the Taliban and they will not give it up easily or quickly as some units are being engaged multiple times a day. Fighting will continue here throughout the winter as weather allows. Kapisa saw significant Taliban casualties 43 they were killed in great numbers in air strikes. Kandahar saw an alarming equal number of reported casualties reported for Taliban and U.S. forces. Most of the U.S. Casualties came from one attack that killed six servicemen.

The fight goes on keep an eye on Khost as the Haqqani Network is being hit both inside Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Chickens coming home to roost

Londanstan will continue to see this problem grow until the Britons decide they need to stand up to the "Asians." In the mean time Sharia law continues to creep into British society. Political correctness and the seeming lack of will to defend British culture is a real shame for the mother country. I wonder if a series of attacks inside of England will finally convince them of the snakes in their midst. The U.S. is caught in the same cycle and it will result in a Muslim population that continues to radicalize. I foresee the incidents of lone wolf attacks to continue to increase while at the same time outside trans-national terrorist groups like al-Qaeda continuing to try another spectacular attack to show they are still relevant.

Meanwhile the U.S. continues to grind away at the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I believe that killing them their takes away from their ability to launch attacks oversees. For example al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular are more active than al-Qaeda central in trying to hit the U.S. Al-Qaeda central is too busy trying not to get hit by a Hellfire missile while AQAP who is not being pressured by Yemen is able to plot and train.

Happy New Year

The Queen, Princesses, Princes, and myself wish everyone a safe and happy New Year.

News on the Haqqani's and the border

The drone strikes and special operations raids against the Haqqani Network might be paying off. A large majority of the drone strikes this year and the last several months in particular have been occurring in North Wazirstan around the Miranshah/Mir Ali area that is controlled by the Haqqanis. While these attacks have netted some high value targets it has played havoc on their foot soldiers who are being hit in their vehicles and homes. The New York times has an article about the slow down of the Haqqanis and how they have not launched a major attack in Kabul in over seven months. I wrote this for "The Captain's Journal" a month or so ago:

The Haqqanis are one of if not the most dangerous groups fighting against the Afghan government and NATO this maybe a focused attempt to degrade them in their home territory to try to get them to the negotiating table. The Haqqanis launched several attacks against U.S. bases in Afghanistan during the time period of this study and got the worst of it on every occasion. The group even failed to overrun a small Afghan outpost right on the border due to U.S. firepower. During the time of this study the U.S. launched two hot pursuit attacks inside of the FATA killing over 50 Haqqani fighters. These attacks were strongly condemned by Pakistan who cut off NATO supply routes for several days. The Haqqanis are regarded as “good” Taliban by the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI). Overtly hitting one of the ISI’s favored groups is what may have prompted the stoppage of NATO supplies more than the violation of Pakistani airspace.

It seems my analysis might have been right on the money on this one. The Haqqanis might only be able to take so much pressure since they come from a small tribe. Even with the help of foreign fighters a unit can only take so much abuse before its operations become degraded.

Insurgent group cooperation has been happening on a tactical level for some time even if the leadership does not get along. This also happens in the Jihad culture as Shiite Hezbollah has added Sunni groups and vice versa since the rise of Islamic terror after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The New York Times again scores how this seems to be happening more and more along the Af/Pak border and in Afghanistan itself.

To quote a British officer NATO and Afghan troops have been killing Taliban groups in an industrial way over the last few months. The Marines and the 101st Airborne have been in a nasty fight for the last several months with both units suffering many casualties. The information I have has the Marines losing 10 so far this month while killing a confirmed 100 Taliban and I am sure the 101st is doing similar good works. The Taliban however will move to where there is less pressure and if the Afghan government cannot provide services to the cleared areas the fighting will have been for naught.