Is This The Taliban Spring Offensive?

The North Shore Journal wonders whether the Taliban have been busy engaging in a military offensive without actually using its thugs in fights. They've apparently been sending propaganda to media outlets, who report that the Taliban have captured territory in Afghanistan without actually confirming that this is the case.

That isn't to say that the Taliban aren't engaging in terrorism or that they aren't engaging in the annual spring offensive.

Canadian and Afghan forces have swept through areas around Kandahar to attack Taliban assets.

Afghan and Canadian forces moved into villages outside Kandahar on Wednesday to root out Taliban militants, killing at least 23 insurgents, while an explosion elsewhere killed four British soldiers, officials said.

Troops in Arghandab district just outside of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan's largest city, exchanged fire with militants during "a few minor contacts," NATO spokesman Mark Laity said.

The Afghan Defense Ministry said more than 20 Taliban fighters had been killed in Tabin, a village in Arghandab, while three other fighters were killed in second village. Two Afghan soldiers also were killed, the ministry said in a statement.

That's on the heels of last week's prison breakout by hundreds of Taliban thugs from a Kandahar prison. And while there are believed to be several hundred Taliban in the area, the sweeps did not reveal anything:

Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense on Tuesday said between 300 and 400 militant fighters were operating in Arghandab , a lush region of pomegranate and grape fields that lies 10 miles northwest of Kandahar city, the Taliban's spiritual home.

Canadian military officials who patrolled through Arghandab over the last day reported "no obvious signs" of insurgent activity. But that didn't mean there were no Taliban there, a NATO news release said. Pentagon officials said reports of hundreds of Taliban in Arghandab were being overstated.

That said, Afghan and NATO forces killed 30 Taliban near Khost. The Afghan military has deployed additional troops to Kandahar in anticipation of a possible offensive although NATO is downplaying such talk (perhaps out of operational security concerns - after all, why telegraph your intentions to the enemy).

Meanwhile, there are reports that the Taliban have captured shipments of US made helicopter components inside Pakistan.

The components of the helicopters arrived in containers at the Karachi Port and were taken by road to Peshawar. The containers then entered the tribal areas for the journey to Afghanistan.

When the containers entered the restive Khyber Agency, Taliban stopped the convoys and took away the helicopter components. Pakistani paramilitary forces tried to confront the Taliban but 'suffered heavy losses due to darkness'.

The incident happened in the same area where Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin was kidnapped in February this year.

A Chinook heavy lift chopper and a Black Hawk multi-role helicopter were captured recently while a Cobra gunship helicopter was hijacked some weeks ago.

Diplomatic sources said a recent US air strike in Pakistan's tribal areas was actually an attack on the location where the components of two helicopters were stored by the Taliban.

When the Taliban first captured the Cobra helicopter, they filmed all the stolen components and supplied a CD to their allies in Afghanistan. Certain people in Farah province of western Afghanistan 'showed an interest in purchasing the Cobra helicopter and subsequently its parts were smuggled to Farah', the report said.

The airstrike scenario makes sense since destroying those helicopter components would be considered a high value target - both for the technologies contained within and the possibility that high level Taliban and/or al Qaeda operatives would be in the vicinity.

It also continues to throw into question the ability of the Pakistani government to secure its military technologies from al Qaeda and Taliban operatives and should make the US rethink how those technologies are transferred to Pakistan.