Grim's Hall

Bloody Afghanistan:

Sixty-one dead overnight in Afghanistan. Hear about it on the news today?

The news is not all bad. Some of the violence is provincial feuding among the Afghan warlords, which is background noise that can be ignored. The bus bombing is bad news, but--as we have seen in Saudi Arabia and Morocco--terror bombings on the old home ground are of negative utility for the force using them. It'd be like the USAF bombing a mosque in St. Louis: no one would see it as a great victory or a show of strength.

Two pieces of news are good from a warfighting standpoint. The first is that two students were killed while making bombs in their dormitory. It's always sad when young people die... well, no, not always.

The second piece of good news comes from this account of an ambush near Shinki. The American-trained Afghan army responded valiantly in a firefight that spanned several hours, and in spite of being ambushed, managed to kill eight of their attackers and captured two foreign jihadi:

The violence began late Tuesday when a group of suspected Taliban fighters attacked government soldiers in Shinki, a small village in Paktia province about six kilometres from the Pakistani frontier, said Khial Baz, an Afghan commander in Khost.

After several hours of fighting, about 50 Afghan troops forced the attackers to retreat. They later found eight bodies.

Baz said troops also captured one Pakistani and one Arab, though his nationality was not known.

Troops also seized a cache of Kalashnikov assault rifles, a telephone, radios and ammunition used by the attackers, Baz said.

Afghan officials have repeatedly said Taliban rebels are using bases inside Pakistan to launch cross-border attacks.

We've discussed before on this page the relative successes of the US military in dealing with guerrilla warfare. One of the best things we have going for us is the counterinsurgency training that the US Special Forces provides, which includes things like dealing with ambushes. I think it's worth saying that SOCOM is doing great things in Afghanistan, especially the Green Berets. De Oppresso Liber!