Taliban defeat will take years: US general

And here was me thinking we beat the buggers in the first month of occupation.

MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan (AFP) – It will take “a few years” to defeat the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, the top US general in the country said Tuesday, reiterating US support for the fight.

Major General David Rodriguez, head of the US-led coalition force, said the US military would stay in the country “as long as they are needed.”

“We definitely think it will take a few years for the Afghan people and the Afghan leaders supported by the coalition forces to defeat them,” he said in a response to a question from a journalist.

An insurgency led by the Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, has been growing in the past two years with a spike in suicide attacks and roadside bombings.

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Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008

Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: “Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

The British insist President Karzai’s office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

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More than half of Afghanistan ‘under Taliban’

By Kim Sengupta

Published: 22 November 2007

 

More than half of Afghanistan is back under Taliban control and the Nato force in the country needs to be doubled in size to cope with the resurgent group, a report by the Senlis Council think-tank says. A study by the group found that the Taliban, enriched by illicit profits from the country’s record poppy harvest, had formed de-facto governments in swathes of the southern Pashtun belt.

The Afghan government and its Nato allies strongly deny the Senlis version of what is taking place in the country and say the extent of alleged Taliban control – 54 per cent – is a major exaggeration. In particular, British troops in Helmand have, in recent months, recovered territory lost to the Islamist group.

But senior defence sources say that a lack of frontline combat forces has meant that areas clawed back from the Taliban often cannot be held and have to be retaken after costly and fierce fighting. There is also an acknowledgement that the dangers on the ground have meant that aid efforts are being stymied.

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Homeland Security Links 9/11 Truthers to Taliban

 Do you remember when Bush Jr. said, “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”? Well, he meant it. Homeland Security’s sub-committee on terrorism risk assessment convened a hearing on 11-06-2007 to discuss “using the Web as a weapon – the Internet as a tool for violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.” In a video of this meeting, which was last aired by C-Span on 11-12-2007, members of the sub-committee clearly pointed to Internet sites that question the legitimacy of the official 9/11 story as tools for recruiting terrorists. 

During the course of the hearing, Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center displayed a Power Point Presentation illustrating what his organization considers terrorist recruitment sites. Here is his testimony: 

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