« FYI: There’s A War OnSermon on the Mound »

War Still On Here, Too

Quick catch up in the ‘Stan:  

Royal Marines spoil Taliban’s celebratory Bhutto bash.  (Via Theo’s old site, where I didn’t notice it the other night, but this blacksmith did. UK Sun:

Royal Marines crept into position as the fanatics partied the night away just hours after Ms Bhutto was killed in Pakistan.

The bash was being held in ruined compounds a few hundred yards from Our Boys’ remote base in Kajaki.

Ragtag Taliban sentries tried to hit back with machine gun fire – but stood no chance against the heroes of 40 Commando’s Charlie Company.

The terrorists were pounded with mortars, rockets and heavy machine guns.

Two bloodthirsty revellers trying to creep towards Our Boys in a trench were spotted by thermal-imaging equipment – and targeted with a Javelin heat-seeking missile.

The £65,000 rocket – designed to stop Soviet tanks – locked on to their body heat and tore more than a kilometer across the desert in seconds.

Troop Sergeant Dominic Conway, 32 – who directed mortar rounds – grinned: “It must have had quite a detrimental effect on their morale.”

Sgt Conway, from Whitley Bay, Tyneside, said of the Taliban lair: “It used to be their backyard and now we’ve made it ours.”

Good fun aside, Asia Times op-ed by an erstwhile Afghan UN diplomat calls for deep international rethink re Afghanistan and Pakistan, noting decades-old Pak “strategic depth” strategy is a colossal failure now biting them as well as us and the Afghans.

Some old news, a month and a half and a little more than a week old, respectively, suggests that rethink is well underway:

NYT Nov. 18

WP Early Warning blog, Dec. 26 

Meanwhile,

National Post: Canadians have died at a higher rate due to ill-preparedness.

Globe and Mail: Canadian general predicts fewer battles, bigger security bubble, more reconstruction in ‘08.

ABC: Aussie general cites progress in reconstruction in Uruzgon.

AFP: A’stan facing food shortages, possibility of famine

VOA: NATO commander predicts record poppy crop

Radio Free Europe: Marriage nightmares for Afghan girls

And no Afghan roundup’s complete without Afghan Lord.

Prior:

Non-Sequitorial Afghanistan, Junger with paratroopers in combat

Digging Out. re Musa Qala

Abandon Hope, counsels Euro wanktank

Topics: Afghanistan, GWOT, Pakistan

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:39 pm on Friday, January 4, 2008

2 Responses to “War Still On Here, Too”

1. major john Says:
   January 5th, 2008 at 1:21 am

   Even as I ready for Iraq, I cannot help but remember feeling like I was deployed to the dark side of the Moon when I was in Afghanistan in ‘04-’05 - thanks for the updates.

   P.S. I’m saving a bottle for the day Hekmatyar Gulbuddin gets his.

2. saltydog Says:
   January 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

   Major John, God speed and watch your back.

   So the Afghans may starve, but there’s a record poppy crop. One may legitimately ask what’s wrong with this picture.

Leave a Reply

Trackback URL

You must be logged in to post a comment.