The Taliban's tactics are evolving in step with the counter-insurgency

A deja vu story too closely reminding the Vietnam war with all the ingredients:the "allies" refuse to fight(remember the photogtaph of three SOUTH VIETNAM ARMY soldiers hiding in a trench,while the Us soldiers by them were showing their heads over the rim,risking to get killed?),the fighting of NATO troops described as an useless sacrifice.Those which are afraid of this war are hidden in air conditioned offices,sippiong their whiskies on the rocks,and play with the lives of their soldiers talking about the "nasty war" that they barely know.Anyway,i personally think that NATO is wasting lives,time,money in Helmand,not using the stick destroying ALL THE OPIUM CROPS.There is no way of getting hearts and minds,in such places:you must be gentle,respect their criminal business,and you get IEDS in change.This cancer could spread to the rest of Afghanistan,because NATO can't stay there forever without finding a solution to the war and switching from combat to building schools,hospitals,bridges.Let's move the soldiers away from there,and send them where their task can be positively performed.

Wulfenstien, how do you know that's not what we want them to read?

Nice story and all, and semper fi to my fellow marines. But Seriously the media (both this magazine, and other's *cough* rolling stone *cough*) need to stay out of this war. Though they wont, I guess it falls more on the government being unwilling to blackwall the media from covering operations. Seriously it does not help it when any ol afghani or would be Taliban fighter can hop on the economist and read shit like "I.E.D's are the biggest killers of american troops and send more home as amputees" That is highly counterproductive not only to the american efforts but to the efforts of the western forces in general (heres lookin at you Britain)

Stop treating Pakistan Army/ISI with kid gloves.
These people are supporting Haqqani/Taliban/LeT against NATO troops
and all that Secretary Clinton does is gives them dollops of more money.

The only way for a better future in that area is dis-integration of
Pak Army/ISI military-business conglomeration. Once that happens,
the people who have lived peacefully for more than 8000-9000 years
will evolve better ways to resolve disputes and govern themselves.

I was astounded by the sheer stupidity of American Central Command when I learnt that they are actually airlifting fuel for ther HMVs to Qandahar:
They should be building a railway or at least a pipeline to both minimize logistic burden and drawing out the insurgents from their dens to attack them. If they started in 2002, they would have had a Karachi-Qandahar or Peshawar-Kabul-Qandahar railroad up and running by now, with armoured trains and UAV patrols covering the tracks on the ground and from above.

us politicians and tv are making it impossible for us troops to win this war. the enemy should be kept guessing. also the troops should make one of the villagers walk the trail infront of the squad .
finally , why fight for the afghani's when their president threatens to side with the taliban when talks are'nt going his way

If we replace the saudi arabians building the schools for pakistanis then we will have a chance to defeat the ennemies. Hillary gives them the money and the generals will pocket it and do nothing.

Good luck to the US troops. Indian and Israeli soldiers have been doing COIN ops for more than 50 years now! Welcome to da club!

This is a very good eye witness story that provides much more information than is often to be found in higher level political analyses of the arcane machinations of NATO/ISAF or the Afghan National Government. However, as with other posters reading this piece left me haunted with the deja vu sense of having read similar stories back in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the American occupation of Viet Nam.

As with the Viet Nam War the US and NATO forces find themselves caught in civil conflict fought out between the Pashtuns in the south and the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara’s of the centre and north. The Afghan National Army (ANA) is not a force that is representative of the Afghan people and as this story explains, a Tajik solider operating in a Pashtun region is essentially a foreigner.

The USA and its NATO/ISAF allies has once again plunged headlong into a quagmire of the kind that they found so painful with Viet Nam and more recently Iraq. The lack of sophistication in the politico-military response to such counter insurgency operations is unfortunately now a hallmark of US/NATO operations.

This is not to criticise the efforts of the US Marines or any of the other military forces in Afghanistan. However, the western troops who are now being asked to bear the brunt of this fighting deserve a much better level of political management from their masters back in Washington, London and elsewhere. The politicians also need to be far more honest with the public about the reality of this conflict.

In a recent interview William Dalrymple, a South Asia expert writer and historian, suggested that the problem facing NATO and the USA in particular was three-fold. First, the war in Afghanistan was more a civil conflict between the Pashtun tribal groups from the south and the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara people of the Northern Alliance. This is a conflict that had been going on for much of the history of Afghanistan and one that NATO/ISAF has stumbled into.

Second, the central Afghan Government of Hamid Karzai is extremely feeble and fragile. Karzari is a Pashtun, but is beholden to the Northern warlords one side and the NATO/ISAF troops on the other. He controls little more than Kabul and stays in power via manipulation of the voting system and cutting backroom deals with everyone including the Taliban.

Third, the Afghan conflict is also now a proxy war for Pakistan and India, with the Pakistani Military Intelligence services providing support and sanctuary for the Taliban. There are even reports from reliable sources that the Pakistani Intelligence Services have representation on the senior councils of the Taliban organisations in the southern regions.

There is no longer any winnable outcome for the NATO/ISAF troops. The announcement by the Governments in London and Washington that they will pull out their troops by 2015 only reinforces the fact that the Taliban has now largely won the war. They may not win in a decisive victory as they did back in the 1990s, however, any future government of Afghanistan will need to have a Taliban component and the best hope is that the tribal chiefs and the Pakistani military find a way to establish a compromise government that will allow for a settling down of the violence so that some form of normal life can emerge for the Afghan people.

Those who dream of a pro-western, democracy in Afghanistan where women are able to fulfil their true potential are likely to be sadly disappointed. The damage has already been done and it is sadly because America and its allies invaded Afghanistan not because they didn’t that the longer term legacy will be a negative view of the west amongst so many of the Afghan people.

DAY FOUR PLEASE