"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear" - George Orwell   
 
Taliban prepare for a summer campaign
 
As the spring thaw melts the snows of Afghanistan's high mountains, the Taliban and its foreign volunteers are once again preparing for war. Thousands of heavily armed Islamic fighters who withdrew from the cities last autumn are regrouping in the four main provinces of the Central Highlands and under the protection of largely sympathetic local Pashtun warlords in Eastern Afghanistan.

Money, weapons and more importantly fresh Pakistan volunteers have been slipped across the border under the noses of the US Forces. Pakistans infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency despite Islamabads claims to contrary are still providing considerable help to its Taliban proteges.
 
British Ministers and their Shadow colleagues blithely talk of the deployment of the Royal Marine task force announced yesterday as an operation to clean up the last remaining pockets of Taliban and Al Qa'ida resistance. Now this must come as a severe surprise to those who believed the confident claims made last December by the US and British Governments that the Taliban had been defeated and that Al Qa'ida was on the run, claims it is worth remembering that were repeated endlessly in the News Media until early March of this year when it became obvious that the Taliban hadn't read Washington's script correctly.
 
US troops try hard, but struggle to cope in the high mountains
 
Not only did a reasonably small force of Taliban and foreign volunteers, not Al Qa'ida it is worth noting, survive a battering by thousands of elite US troops and their Afghan allies for at least 12 days, supported by intense bombing by US airpower which included the use of new specially designed bombs to kill those Islamic Fighters hiding in caves, but succeeded in inflicting a reported 10% casualty rate on the far better equipped men of the 10th Mountain, 101st Airborne and 3rd Special Forces (Green Berets). To add insult to injury most of the Taliban escaped further into the mountains to join up with other groups or safely withdrew into Pakistan, leaving probably no more than 60-100 dead in total. No hard evidence has been forthcoming from the Pentagon to confirm their claims of a significant victory with large numbers of the enemy killed.To further show their aggressive intent the Taliban launched a small scale attack on the US base in Khost soon after the end of Operation Anaconda.
 
Though the realisation is slow to dawn on much of the West, the war in Afghanistan may not be drawing to a close. In fact, as AFI Research has pointed out on numerous occasions, the Taliban were never properly defeated in battle and the real fighting may only now be about to get under way. The United States would be very unwise to put to much reliance on its new found Afghan allies many of whom dislike foreign interference and Western arrogance more than they fear the Islamic extremists. The Taliban under its new leadership in the field still hold sway over large parts of the country and any serious success by them could see a movement of popular support in their direction and away from a weak 'imposed' Government in Kabul.
 
Royal Marines - are they to be Blair's Cannon-fodder?
 
The British Government appears not to have properly come to terms with the real nature and scope of the War on terrorism. Afghanistan was the easiest by far of the targets and victory is still far from assured some six months after the first US bombs were dropped. The presence of such a large elite British Force in Afghanistan is a sure sign that unease is growing that a new civil war in the country may be on the point of erupting with incalculable consequences for future US led military action in Iraq and elsewhere.
It is a sad fact that although warned repeatedly by the Chiefs of Staff against further overstretching Britain's limited military ability, a gung-ho Government has placed British troops in danger in a no-win situation in Afghanistan. Ego and a misplaced sense of patriotism are not a good basis for sound military judgement and only time will tell how many Royal Marines will be killed or injured before common sense prevails and the security of Afghanistan is finally left to its inhabitants and the United Nations.
 
Richard M. Bennett
 

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