A #Taliban convoy in Nimroz province, #Afghanistan. They gathered in the open for quite a long time. No fear of Coalition air power. pic.twitter.com/ln36SOYLwO
— Long War Journal (@LongWarJournal) October 5, 2017
In a new video released by the Taliban, the group assembled a large number of fighters and vehicles in Nimruz province in southwestern Afghanistan and paraded them in broad daylight.
As with previous propaganda videos, the Taliban demonstrated that it can organize its forces for assaults on bases and district centers and execute attacks over extended periods of time, or parade its troops in the open, without fear of being targeted from the air by Afghan or Coalition forces.
In the latest video, title Jihadic Process in Nimruz and Rehabilitation, the Taliban assembled dozens of vehicles – including US-made HUMVEEs that have been captured from Afghan forces and new Toyota Hilux pickup trucks – along with more than 100 fighters in a desert area. The Taliban then remained in the area for a significant amount of time; the group conducted three separate interviews with local leaders while the convoy sat still.
As previously noted on FDD’s Long War Journal, the Coalition and Afghan military cannot hope to roll back Taliban gains – let alone defeat it – until it takes steps to smash the Taliban’s ability to operate openly.
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6 Comments
What are the satellite cameras that guide drones, doing. Blacked out? Even the Isis used to parade themselves without fear and no one touched them.
these terrorist are in the open all the time moving freely in broad day light. where are the USA air force. what is wrong with this picture. kill these blood thirsty terrorist. God Bless the USA and God Bless Israel. Jerusalem is Israels capital. loner
Why doesn’t the US Air Force wipe out these parades?
The Army brass should get out their smart phone google street map and look for the red lines in the road. Red line=Taliban convoy. “There is a traffic delay at Nimroz…”
Seriously though, I agree with the articles conclusion but am just dead set against this intervention.
Afghanistan is the perfect example of the ‘Sisyphean task’-impossible to complete.
Partnered with forces we do not trust or show respect to, share culture-religion with, or shoulder the same burdens with, the end result will be disappointment, frustration and abandonment on all sides.
In the USA, the blame will be put on other Americans as a tool for political gain, those that did not support the war or who told the truth about it. No commission will establish the truth or dustbin the lies, so partisanship and politics will prevail as usual.
The task will have not been impossible, it will just be the quitters, the cut-n-runners who pulled the rug out from under the troops just as victory was in their grasp…yet again.
Feels like 2005 Iraq or perhaps 1965 Vietnam. If you read again, the last paragraph from this article and remove the word Taliban and replace it with Viet Cong and read it again but this time with the absolute aid of history, we can look for the reasons why a military force is able to operate openly without fear. Now everything can be said this way or that way due to politics or partisanship but it comes down to the hearts and minds of the population that are having their faces ground. The term ‘hearts and minds’ is often said as a joke of sorts but it really was no joke, it was just a Sisyphean task that eventually claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans with a 30% PTSD rate among participants and survivors.
I see the same things being said of Afghanistan that were said of Vietnam and the defeat there. Hands being tied with bad ROE, the old media “stab in the back” (also known as telling the truth), no support at home (for multiple obvious reasons).
Obama had 100,000 troops and the claim by people opposed to him, is he never put in enough troops or do it fast enough when he did. Is the military pretending that they can do with less then 20,000 now, what they could not do with over 100 thousand then, or is it the politicians that misrepresent?
It took many years after Vietnam to get the truth out in the open, that the war was considered unwinnable by so many of those that misrepresented it, directed it, including all presidents, that the media was pressured to lie for the national gain. The name George W. Ball. is known by very few.
The term Sisyphean task comes from Greek mythology. Sisyphus, for his wrong doing, was sentenced to push a boulder up a hill and watch it roll back down, again and again for all time.
We are now in the process of adjusting the number of Americans pushing, as the stones are many and we are finding the hills steep.
Shocked that they can get those Humvees to operate without a drip pan and chock block! Serious note: with the new ROE’s, should we expect these social media posts to result in air strikes, like we did with ISIS?
youare taking it too seriously whereas the US is not. Where the Hell were the Drones???? only meant for persons disagreeing with US Policies………… the ISIS was raised and promoted by them and they want to let the worlD KNOW…. ” WE ARE WITHDRAWING but LEAVING OUR ASSETS BEHIND””