Just Another Day in Paradise

A whole bunch of Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces for planning to carry out a massive car bombing in Israel on the last day of Passover. The only reason they were caught was because the trigger mechanism didn't work.

Oh, and the terrorists were all linked to Hamas. Hamas, of course, denies any involvement. Of course they do so.

Meanwhile, suicide bombers have been busy elsewhere in the world. One blew themself up to avoid being captured in Morocco. A female suicide bomber murdered 17 other Muslims in Iraq.

And leave it to Newsweek to profile the Taliban's latest weapon: suicide bombers. No doubt that they'll come in handy during the Taliban's annual spring offensive that leaves quite the body count of dead and shattered Taliban and al Qaeda in its wake. What the headline doesn't entirely make clear is that this isn't exactly a new tactic; they've been at it for some time, though the results shouldn't inspire more Taliban to blow themselves up:

Fortunately the load on his shoulder killed no one at all that day. But Taliban leaders are counting on these weapons to drive America out of Afghanistan. In his latest propaganda video the murderous Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah Akhund brags of having 1,800 trained suicide bombers just waiting for orders to strike and kill. Other Taliban leaders question that figure, but there's no doubt that the rate of attacks is skyrocketing. With tools and tactics borrowed from Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban committed 139 suicide bombings last year, more than five times the 2005 number. So far this year they have carried out more than 30 such attacks, killing dozens of people and wounding scores more. Security forces in Afghanistan are bracing for even worse to come: in his new video, Dadullah declares that the Taliban's annual spring offensive is "starting now."

While Taliban leaders claim to attack only legitimate military targets, most of the dead and injured have been civilians. Of the nearly 300 people who were killed by suicide bombers in Afghanistan last year, 75 percent were unarmed men, women and children. This year is expected to be even bloodier. Suicide car bombs went off last week in Laghman province and Kabul, reportedly killing a total of 14 people—at least five of them children.

Those leaders couldn't care who they kill and the numbers bear out the fact that Karzai was right to say that the Taliban is licked, but they don't know it yet. They can't dislodge the US and coalition forces and they can't inflict the kind of death and misery that their cohort in Iraq has been able to achieve thus far.

The Taliban have quite a bit in common with the insurgents and terrorists blowing up cars and themselves in Iraq - a ghoulish desire to inflict the maximum number of casualties on civilian populations as possible. The attacks aren't against military targets because that would mean certain discovery and death, so they go against lightly defended targets.

This is what to expect during the latest spring offensive by the Taliban. The media will focus not on the dead Taliban or al Qaeda, but the fleeting moments when Taliban manage to wrest a village from Afghan control for a few hours.