Taliban gearing up for spring offensive

Source: Globe and Mail

ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Sapper Marc Carignan had just walked inside the compound, when a large explosion erupted near the main door, spraying jagged metal shrapnel several hundred metres and leaving a crater the size of a small car.

... It was the second close call for the Canadian military in recent days, and another sign that Taliban insurgents are readying for an expected spring offensive using every weapon they can get their hands on.

... The operation had been patrolling areas in the Panjwai and Zhari districts before the attack occurred. The soldiers were on foot.

Security in the two districts is currently so poor, there are some military outposts that are being resupplied by helicopter drops instead of vehicle convoys. Even senior district leaders from the area don't live here because it's too dangerous, although they attend a weekly council meeting on Thursdays in Bazar-e-Panjwai, a small village about 40 kilometres from Kandahar.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080518.wafghan19/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

They sure are tenacious.

saves on expenses....next year they will be able to call it house spring cleaning in Kandahar....But it will be Obama bringing the high mountain desert heat to the Taliban homefield !


snip
...Unlike roadside bombs, which have been one of the most popular tools used by the Taliban, Saturday's attack required substantial planning and effort.

snip

....soldiers searched the abandoned compound on the north bank of the Arghandab River southwest of Kandahar and found dozens of improvised explosive devices, including mortars, which failed to detonate. Those explosives, which were wired together by a single strand of copper wire and activated by command denotation, were sequenced to blow up so the soldiers would be trapped inside and killed. They didn't detonate because of faulty wiring.

“That place was rigged to kill everybody,” said Warrant Officer Chuck Côté

snip
“They want us down here,” he said.

However, he added that many residents are afraid of the Taliban, and will sometimes stay silent about possible attacks or even assist them, for fear of reprisals against them or their families.


snip


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080518.wafghan19/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

wonder how much weed the Talliban smoked when they implemented their "substantial effort" plan ?

the Taliban wouldn't allow anot only the US to extract Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan with troops on their soil, but also, that the Taliban wouldn't hand over bin Laden. So the US went in and the Taliban fought them as any country be invaded would. But the conflict wasn't so much with the Taliban as it was with getting bin Laden. So how does the US now find itself "at war" with the Taliban? It appears that Bush & Co. wanted complete war with the Middle East. They has an opportunity to fully extract bin Laden but didn't. Why? We all know the amswer.

the yearly migration of the taliban. Same headline every year in spring. Only this time they have more $$$$ because marines ignore their "crops"... wait that's an ongoing this too.

And I expect to see it every year until we leave.

Not latest breaking news in my book.
Just a rehash of past history.

Militants linked to al-Qa’eda have set up training camps in Pakistan to teach children how to conduct suicide attacks. The Pakistani army claimed today to have overrun one such camp in territory where the notorious Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operates.

Militants had transformed a government-run school near the village of Spinkai in South Waziristan into what one officer described as a “nursery for preparing suicide bombers”.

The school was part of a large compound above the village that included a small mosque.Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commander of the division that captured the area, said: “It was like factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys and turning them into suicide bombers.”

He told the Dawn newspaper that at another location military investigators found film footage on a DVD that they believed depicts children at the school being taught suicide training.

snip


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1988095/Al-Qa'eda-training-children-as-suicide-bombers.html

How soon they will be on "spring break" from these Saudi funded schools of higher education ?

snip
The United Nations estimates the terrorist groups receive closer to 60 percent from drugs.
"We are in there fighting insurgents who are as much narco-dealers as they are insurgents," McNeill said. "In some cases, we are fired upon by people doing narco-business."


snip

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/05/19/nato_troops_wipe_out_afghan_poppy_fields/3632/

I'm guessing the Taliban were counting on that cash crop to pay for the spring offensive.