Winning the War in Afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to the Australian think tank, the Lowry Institute, for this article on an attack I'd noted and not fully appreciated - a Taliban attack in the Panjshir Valley:http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/...-fortress.aspx

Panjshir is effectively Afghanistan's charter province: a place where improving security and living standards have shown that the ISAF campaign can work....

Despite the relatively low loss of life and infrastructure, this attack provides enormous strategic value to the Taliban. It demonstrates that its claim that 'NATO is no longer safe anywhere in the country' is essentially true.

...This attack takes away the one success story that ISAF and the Afghan government had, and the Taliban propaganda machine has been quick to text Western journalists to point that out.

Since the thread's title is 'Winning the War in Afghanistan' it made me wonder if the Taliban and allies (no names) strategy of reducing the confidence of it's opponents is winning.

Having read elsewhere 'Red Rat' contention is that in Helmand the Taliban have had a bad time: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=14285&page=4, Post No.64:

In Helmand the evidence would tend to support the counter-proposition; the the Taleban are playing catch-up to ISAF at the tactical and operational level. They are heavily attrited, have comprehensively lost influence, lost control of ground, and their ability to prosecute successful attacks has declined markedly as well. We have now seen over 12 months of steady decline in violence in Helmand, no summer campaign season in the traditional sense and winter season which has seen ISAF move from consolidation to offence. Part of the reason that so few insurgents are being killed now is that there are far fewer of them left - attrition still plays a role in campaigning.

From my faraway armchair the campaigning in Helmand is peripheral to the high impact, public attacks approach to reducing confidence in important locations and as in Panjshir iconic places.