Taliban Resurgent

From Reuters:

Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report

The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions," with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday.

If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said.

"The Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force," the Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink."

"Its ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt," it said. "The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centers, and important road arteries."

Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers.

It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan's booming opium trade.

"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when," the report said.

This proves the point that my original opposition to the war in Iraq was based. Unlike many I thought it was a bad idea from a purely strategic standpoint. First I'm a big believer that you don't start a new task until you have finished the last one. Secondly given Afghanistan's history winning the country has always been harder than keeping it. As a result of our optional involvement in Iraq we have given the Taliban enough breathing room to regroup. Hence we may be forced to choose which war we want to win. Fortunately for W should it come to that he won't be burdened by that decision. That may very well be the job of the next POTUS. And for that reason alone this election may be the most important one in a generation.

Taliban Military Leader Is Killed

From the WaPo:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 13 -- Mullah Dadullah was the face of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan as it used suicide bombings, videotaped beheadings and targeted assassinations to escalate its insurgent campaign over the past two years.

Dadullah periodically turned up on television to taunt the Afghan government and U.S.-led international forces with threats of ever more ambitious attacks.

On Sunday, his face was on display again, resting on a pink sheet, bloody and lifeless. A bullet hole was visible in the back of his head, with two more piercings in his stomach.

Dadullah, the Taliban's top operational commander, was killed Saturday after U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces tracked him down and surrounded him in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and international security officials.

His death was hailed by those officials as a critical victory in the fight against the Taliban at a time when the extremist Islamic movement has destabilized large portions of the country through Dadullah's uncompromising approach to warfare.

"We fully expect Mullah Dadullah will be replaced in time, but for now the insurgency has received a serious blow," said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led force that patrols Afghanistan and that supported U.S.-led operations against Dadullah.

Thomas described Dadullah as "the top person in our scope in Afghanistan that we were interested in removing."

It was unclear who would replace Dadullah. Another top leader, Akhter Mohammed Osmani, was killed in December, and a third, Obaidullah Akhund, was captured in February. Although the group's overall leader, Mohammad Omar, remains at large, he is believed to play a lesser role in the organization's military operations.

A Taliban spokesman denied that Dadullah had been killed, but witnesses who inspected the body as it lay at the governor's palace in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday identified it as Dadullah's, based on distinctive facial features and a missing left leg. More

Good going! Between this and the two Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders all being taken out in the past two weeks I'd say we're having a heck of a month.

So good in fact that if I were more suspicious or prone to being conspiratorial I'd say that they had been keeping the bodies on ice until support for the war fell to an all time low .....