Taliban methods, tactics in Afghanistan change

March 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan

A decade ago, when the Taliban controlled the Afghan government, their militiamen — barely motivated, untrained conscripts — tried for five years to seize control of the entire country from more moderate forces but didn’t succeed, even with the help of Osama bin Laden’s Arab and other foreign volunteers.

Today, although the United States and more than three dozen NATO allies and other countries are supporting Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Taliban dominate a growing swath of territory, and their power trumps the government’s in three-quarters of the country.

Although they’re often portrayed as mindless fanatics, the militant Islamists’ “life experience” from their years in the wilderness, their study of American military tactics and their analysis of the Karzai government’s shortcomings have helped reverse their fortunes, U.S. intelligence experts say.

With President Barack Obama sending at least 30,000 additional American troops to knock the Taliban off-balance and a U.S.-led offensive in Helmand province, a better understanding of today’s Taliban is central to the effort to defeat them and to begin withdrawing some American troops from Afghanistan in summer 2011.

Though much is made of the recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan and the deaths of others in U.S. unmanned-drone attacks, the group appears to be a movement in transition, with greater sophistication along with limited central control and considerable autonomy for its local commanders in Afghanistan.

Western intelligence officials cite varied signs of the “new” Taliban:

During and after every military operation, top Taliban leaders — who intelligence officials think move along the Afghan-Pakistani border but sometimes retreat to Karachi and other Pakistani cities — routinely run circles around the Karzai government with rapid-response public relations.

Some Taliban still fight as they did a decade ago, in flip-flops and traditional baggy pants, but the hard-core “Taliban cavalry” is equipped with North Face jackets, good boots, warm clothing and swift motorbikes purchased in Pakistan.

The Taliban made some 8,000 improvised explosive devices last year, an astonishing rate of almost 22 a day. “An enemy that can generate 8,000 IEDS and bring 8,000 IEDS to bear and have a major effect, we ought to hire the J-4, the logistician,” said a top general with the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force.