There are stirrings on the Afghan/Pakistan front as spring approaches and conditions for military operations improve, including an official disclosure:
The commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday that the military had adopted new tactics to combat Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the country.The officer, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno of the Army, said that in the past three months, American units down to the level of 40-soldier platoons had been dispatched to live in villages where they can forge ties with tribal elders and glean better information about the location and activities of guerrillas.
In the past, he said, American forces typically gathered intelligence about hostile forces, carried out focused raids for several days against those targets, then returned to base to plan and prepare for their next mission.
"What we're doing is moving to a more classic counterinsurgency strategy here in Afghanistan," General Barno told reporters at the Pentagon in a videoconference from his headquarters in Kabul, the capital. "That's a fairly significant change in terms of our tactical approach out there on the ground."
The approach, he said, will give soldiers "great depth of knowledge, understanding, and much better intelligence access to the local people in those areas by owning, as it were, those chunks of territory."
There's also an interesting tidbit reported from an Arab-language newspaper in London, according to ABC News:
Pakistani tribal sources told Al Hayat newspaper that eye witnesses saw American forces being dropped in Kohat airport near Peshawar, close to an area where al Qaeda members are believed to be hiding. They also said there's U.S. movement in Banu in the middle of the tribal areas. There's speculation that this may be in preparation for a spring offensive against al Qaeda elements which the Pentagon had announced.Posted by Alan at February 18, 2004 06:50 AM