Taliban attack shows tactical skill, military limits
Jonathon Burch and Hamid Shalizi, Reuters India
The Taliban scored a strategic and political victory with brazen, well-timed attacks in the heart of Kabul on Monday, but the failed assaults on key government buildings also showed the limits to their military capacity.
The raids carried out by at least 10 gunmen, including suicide bombers, were well coordinated and bold even for Afghanistan and paralyzed the capital for several hours.
However, while the militants spread out across a strategic area near government ministries and a luxury hotel, they failed to seize any of their declared targets and instead holed up in a poorly defended shopping centre.
“They just want to show their power, it was an ‘attack show’ from the Taliban, not a military-based action. I think there was not a military goal,” said Wahid Mudjah, a Kabul-based writer and political analyst.
“They just wanted a show for the international community.”…
(19 Jan 2010)
What’s behind latest Taliban attack on Kabul?
Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor
Taliban gunmen attacked central Kabul on Monday, delivering a deadly response to new efforts by the Afghan government to get insurgents to defect.
Explosions rocked the capital as two of the attackers detonated suicide vests. Gun battles raged for more than five hours near the gates of the presidential palace, other ministries, and inside a shopping complex. So far, according to preliminary reports, five people have died and nearly 40 were wounded, while security forces killed seven attackers.
The insurgency has felt pressure from several angles in recent weeks. The United States doubled down with more troops, and is signaling a major new offensive in the south. The Afghan government, meanwhile, has begun talking up lavish new incentives of jobs and training for defectors. As for the Afghan people, which provide the oxygen for any insurgency, a poll last week found public support rebounding for President Hamid Karzai.
Trying to short-circuit Karzai outreach
The attack can be read as a Taliban effort at “giving a negative answer to the outreach of Mr. Karzai, threatening Afghanistan before the London Conference, and, of course, showing their power even when polls say Afghanistan is getting on the right track,” says Waliullah Rahmani, a security analyst with the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies…
(18 Jan 2010)
Kabul on alert after attacks
staff, al jazeera
Afghanistan’s capital has been put on high alert following one of the most co-ordinated offensives on Kabul since the Taliban were removed from power by a US-led invasion in 2001.
Security was tight in Kabul on Tuesday, a day after Taliban fighters successfully penetrated the highly-fortified heart of the city, targeting key government buildings.
Mohammad Khalil Dastyar, the deputy police chief, said troops were searching vehicles entering the capital and had increased the number of checkpoints in the city, as well as foot and vehicle patrols.
Farouq Bashar, from Kabul university, told Al Jazeera that “normal business” had resumed on the streets of Kabul…
(19 Jan 2010)
