Targeting Taliban

This AP story provides a bit of insight into what is going on in Musa Qala, which is part of the Helmund Province in Afghanistan. Bill Roggio has the background.

For starters, AP's Jason Straziuso writes:

Days after Taliban fighters overran Musa Qala a U.S. commander pledged that Western troops would take it back. Nine months later, the town is still Taliban territory, a symbol of the West's struggles to control the poppy-growing south.

But a string of recent battles around Musa Qala, won overwhelmingly by American Special Forces, signal a renewed U.S. focus on the symbolic Taliban stronghold.

That's not entirely accurate. Roggio notes:

For the British and the Danes, Musa Qala will be a place talked about for generations after a platoon of British Special Forces fought off daily assaults for 52 days before finally being relieved. After another two months of fighting, the coalition eventually withdrew, pulling out of the city center in October 2006. Soon after, a deal was struck with the Taliban for both sides to pull out, leaving control of the area in the hands of tribal elders. That peace was shattered in February 2007 when US airstrikes killed a prominent Taliban commander, prompting Taliban forces to once again seize the town by force. They have been there ever since.

He also provides a timeline of events in the region. There hasn't been a concerted effort to go after the Taliban in this region until now, and that particular region was inside the UK's area of operation, although US Special Forces operated there as well.

US special forces have been pounding it on the Taliban, killing them en masse. However, the US and Afghan forces are also seeking to turn tribal leaders in the region against the Taliban, in part to stanch the flow of terrorists and Taliban in the region:

Brig. Gen. Ghulam Muhiddin Ghori, a top Afghan army commander in Helmand, said the foreign fighters are running training camps near Musa Qala to teach militants how to carry out suicide and roadside bomb attacks. But he said no big military operations are being launched to overtake the town itself because of a fear of civilian casualties.

"Afghan and coalition forces have surrounded the Musa Qala district center. We have started negotiations with tribal leaders there to take over Musa Qala from the Taliban," Ghori told The Associated Press. "The tribal leaders are also worried about these Taliban because the foreign fighters — Arabs, Chechens, Baluchs and Uzbeks — they are in Musa Qala."

The latest fighting started when Taliban elements attacked an Afghan-coalition convoy late last week, which led to airstrikes on Taliban positions, killing several dozen of these thugs.

Every time that airstrikes are called in, the Taliban immediately claim that civilians were killed - knowing just how to play the media. Last week was no exception, as they claimed that the airstrikes killed civilians, not Taliban thugs. Coalition forces once again found no evidence that civilians were killed in those airstrikes.

Airstrike casualties have been a sore spot in Afghanistan in particular because of repeated claims that civilians have been targeted and/or killed in those strikes. That civilians might have been killed in some instances because Taliban were hiding among the civilian populations gets ignored by the media, which instead focuses on who conducted the airstrikes. Culpability remains on the Taliban in such instances, though the media always downplays such things. NATO and the US go out of their way to avoid hitting civilians, while Taliban and al Qaeda purposefully put civilians in the middle of gunfights.