So we are told.
"Taliban setbacks gratify Afghans, but fears linger" June 12, 2011|By Carlotta Gall, New York Times
MARJAH, Afghanistan — The poppy harvest is over and the fighting season has arrived in southern Afghanistan — except this year the Taliban have not returned in their usual numbers to intensify the war, Afghans across the region say.
They credit the thousands of additional US troops and Afghan security forces deployed to insurgency-ridden districts who have cleared out most of the Taliban and are keeping them at bay.
I'm already tired of the propaganda.
Related:
Taliban Give and Take
Doubts About Afghanistan
Taliban Spreading Suicide in Afghanistan
Expanding operations outward is being kept at bay?
Update: Taliban Move Into Kandahar City
When will the war lies end?!
The change is palpable. In Marjah, the district in Helmand Province where US Marines began the offensive 15 months ago, government officials can now drive freely. Last year, they could arrive only by helicopter because of the threat of roadside bombs and ambushes.
So it took 15 months to secure a farm town?
Will the lies never end, dear readers?
In neighboring Kandahar Province, the heartland of the insurgency, Taliban commanders who have ventured back for the new fighting season were detained or chased out of the area within hours of arriving from Pakistan, villagers and officials say.
In both places, the insurgency is now mostly limited to small groups of local fighters who lay mines or carry out assassinations or suicide bombings in the cities, attacks that are more important psychologically than strategically, residents and Afghan and NATO officials say.
Yes, the violence is ALL IN YOUR MIND!
Civilian and military casualties remain high. A string of attacks across the country yesterday, including one carried out by a suicide bomber pushing an ice cream cart, killed at least 21 people, as the United Nations released a report showing that May was the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since 2007.
But there are concerns about what will happen when the foreign troops leave....
Few analysts believe they can prevent the Taliban from reinfiltrating Afghan forces, as they threaten to do, and as they did when US troops and resources were diverted to Iraq in 2005....
Then this is all a wheel-spinning exercise in wasted loot and blood.
In Marjah, as elsewhere across much of the south, the reduced presence of Taliban fighters has allowed people to return to work and a local government to emerge, however tentatively. Yet the greatest shortcoming — one the military buildup was not intended to address by itself — is a lack of effective governments and strong Afghan institutions to fill the void left by the Taliban retreat.
Even as the local leadership expands and begins to earn the support of the population, there remains an intense distrust of President Hamid Karzai’s government. Afghans have doubts about whether it can deliver on its own once Karzai’s foreign backers begin to withdraw, and they express a deep unhappiness over the corruption, cronyism, and general ineffectiveness that undermines any progress made on the ground.
“There were internal things that made people support the Taliban: weak administration, injustice, bad district governors,’’ said the governor of Helmand Province, Gulab Mangal, who is credited with improving the local government....
Or they are a neighbor.
It took the Marines far longer to clear and secure Marjah than many other places, since the Taliban were so entrenched in the population and the population was so alienated from the government.
Well, they DO LIVE THERE!
For months the Taliban retained their grip over Marjah, and they still hold sway in several pockets.
Sigh. Once again you are being deceived by your newspaper, American.
Yet the overwhelming strength of the Marines, and large numbers of Afghan army and police forces brought in to increase security, eventually tipped the balance, residents and officials in the region said.
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Related: Marines Take Marjah
Marines Lose Marjah
The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Lost Marjah Mojo
And now we are being told we won again?
"For Afghan civilians, May was grim milestone" by Patrick Quinn Associated Press / June 11, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan— Violence has been on the rise as the Taliban and other insurgents try to regain territory lost in the fall and winter to the U.S.-led coalition in southern Afghanistan. The insurgents have stepped up suicide attacks and bombings that are more likely to affect civilians....
The insurgency generally focuses its attacks on international and Afghan armed forces, but one of Saturday's attacks seemed designed to target children.
"Now stop and think here for a moment. All revolutions depend on public support. Revolutionaries try to first win the people before they take on the government. So, no revolutionary goes out and murders civilians in cold blood. Did Washington and his men just mow down a marketplace of their fellow colonials for the heck of it? No, they did not. Washington and the Founding Fathers knew that their revolution to build a new country needed the support of those who would live in that country. This is true for every revolution in history. Therefore, these acts of terror being blamed on the insurgency must all be fakes, committed by intelligence agencies working for the governments to be blamed on the insurgents in order to destroy public support for the revolution." -- Wake the Flock Up
Related:
The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Blackening Out Blackwater Assassins
The Boston Globe Bucks Up the CIA
"Al-CIA-Duh" Invades Afghanistan
CIA Assassins Lend a Helping Hand in Afghanistan
CIA Strike Teams Swoop Into Afghanistan
More Assassins Headed to Afghanistan
Petraeus' Private Eyes
What Works for AmeriKa in Afghanistan
What isn't working for me is the AmeriKan newspaper.
A suicide bomber pushing a red ice cream cart in the provincial capital of central Ghazni detonated his explosives, killing one and wounding three others, according to provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain....
A roadside bomb also hit a minibus carrying a family to a shrine for a religious pilgrimage in the Khakrez district of Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. The attack killed members of the family, including eight children and five women, according to provincial police chief Abdul Raziq....
Karzai, meanwhile, was in Pakistan meeting with the country's political and military leadership in an effort to jump-start a faltering peace process with the Taliban, part of a reconciliation effort that he began last year....
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Related:
"faltering peace negotiations"
That's what I look for and rarely find in my newspaper.
