The Taliban Can Be Stopped
The Taliban Can Be Stopped
by Colonel Gary Anderson, Small Wars Journal
The Taliban Can Be Stopped (Full PDF Article)
The Taliban are not ten feet tall, and there is no horde of Taliban supermen overrunning either Afghanistan or Pakistan. That is not how they operate. We and the Pakistanis tend to try to put their offensives” in our frame of reference, and then are continually surprised when massive applications of force fail to stop them, and only result in increased negative publicity and civilian casualties.
The reality of Taliban offensives is that they largely consist of their fighters walking into an undefended village, and announcing to the population that, there is going to be a war here, if you don’t want to be part of it, leave.” Those who don’t want to be part of the war do depart and become internally displaced persons or refugees (in the case of those who flee across borders). Those who stay can either assist the Taliban or dig in and hope that they do not get caught in the crossfire.
The Taliban do bring a rough sense of law and order and swift justice that contrasts with the cumbersome and corrupt governance that all too often characterizes governance in the hinterlands of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Lack of security and poor governance, not the Taliban are the real enemies in both nations.
