vsdoc
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Thanks Taimi.
But if you read your own long post (which i appreciate in terms of the effort put in) you will see that a number of the questions you have raised have no logical answer UNLESS it is that the Taliban were gutless cowards who turned and fled at the first signs of organised assault.
Somehow I still have my reservations on that score, and while I defer to your superior local knowledge, I will still follow and wait and see.
Also to an extent I am aware of the ethnicity and language/custom issues of mutually exclusive tribes that do not share a lot of love for each other historically and have spilt blood for years as they hold on tightly to their domains.
Not very different from a fragmented land of warring tribes/principalities anywhere else in the world too. But history is also witness to the coming together of such disparate hostile entities either under a common banner or in the form of a mutually self-serving loose alliance against a common enemy, only to return back to their cosy domains when the enemy has been taken care of.
And this is I feel a serious reality in the present context, where a mobile force with a widened theater of operations and easy routes of egress in times of distress, clashes with a more cumbersome and less mobile traditional army where superior firepower counts for nothing once there is nothing much left to destroy, and superior numbers often translate just to higher kill rates sustained in carefully planned attacks on bunched targets as opposed to the nebulous enemy.
I remember an old post of S-2 and concur with it to an extent - i.e. the Taliban have gone underground, given up the gun (side-arms are de rigeur in that part of the world anyways apparently) for the time being, and will lie low and merge with the populance. However, where I veer away from his way of thinking is that this is not going to be any permamnent seeing the light abjurement of violence type change of heart and they will regroup, re-affiliate, and come back unless they are finished off right now.
And as correctly pointed out by you, like in any locally home grown and locally supported war, unless the PA has superb ground level intelligence/moles and the support of the local population, these guys are going to sift away like sand through your fingertips.
And I do not see that happening in these traditionally hostile blood-loyalty type tribal areas, rerwards, threats, or not.
Cheers, Doc
But if you read your own long post (which i appreciate in terms of the effort put in) you will see that a number of the questions you have raised have no logical answer UNLESS it is that the Taliban were gutless cowards who turned and fled at the first signs of organised assault.
Somehow I still have my reservations on that score, and while I defer to your superior local knowledge, I will still follow and wait and see.
Also to an extent I am aware of the ethnicity and language/custom issues of mutually exclusive tribes that do not share a lot of love for each other historically and have spilt blood for years as they hold on tightly to their domains.
Not very different from a fragmented land of warring tribes/principalities anywhere else in the world too. But history is also witness to the coming together of such disparate hostile entities either under a common banner or in the form of a mutually self-serving loose alliance against a common enemy, only to return back to their cosy domains when the enemy has been taken care of.
And this is I feel a serious reality in the present context, where a mobile force with a widened theater of operations and easy routes of egress in times of distress, clashes with a more cumbersome and less mobile traditional army where superior firepower counts for nothing once there is nothing much left to destroy, and superior numbers often translate just to higher kill rates sustained in carefully planned attacks on bunched targets as opposed to the nebulous enemy.
I remember an old post of S-2 and concur with it to an extent - i.e. the Taliban have gone underground, given up the gun (side-arms are de rigeur in that part of the world anyways apparently) for the time being, and will lie low and merge with the populance. However, where I veer away from his way of thinking is that this is not going to be any permamnent seeing the light abjurement of violence type change of heart and they will regroup, re-affiliate, and come back unless they are finished off right now.
And as correctly pointed out by you, like in any locally home grown and locally supported war, unless the PA has superb ground level intelligence/moles and the support of the local population, these guys are going to sift away like sand through your fingertips.
And I do not see that happening in these traditionally hostile blood-loyalty type tribal areas, rerwards, threats, or not.
Cheers, Doc
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