The Taliban launched a brazen attack on the capital, Kabul yesterdays leading to fire fights close to the Presidential palace. The terrorists detonated a bomb in front of the Central Bank and then took over a shopping complex.
The fact that with 84,150 foreign troops and an additional 100,000 Afghan army troops in the country, the Taliban was still able to breach the regional headquarters, where you would imagine the security to be a bit tighter, doesn’t bode well for the international mission to stabilize Afghanistan.
Obama will have to re-think his plans for the country. A simple troop surge will not do the job. Afghanistan is vastly different from Iraq and the same plans will not work.
Afghanistan has not been stable for almost 30 years now. Iraq, on the other hand, was quite stable under Saddam Hussein. The Taliban, which is mostly Afghan with some foreign fighters, is used to long wars of attrition. In Iraq, most of the militants were outsiders. Afghan fighters have a clear source of revenue in the country’s poppy plantations; Iraq’s didn’t.
It may be time to sit down and talk with the Taliban. That is the only way left out of this mess.
