I read that piece on Abu M's place and it had me scratching my head. I don't remember Kandahar being much different when I was there in 2005 and, IIRC, in 2007 the Taliban made a concerted effort to try to "take" the city through a variety of means. It's never wholly been under Taliban control nor has it ever been wholly secure - security has ebbed and flowed and changed with the times. This is to be expected since much of the Taliban's senior leadership come from the Kandahar area.

It appears to me many people now looking at Afghanistan were focused on Iraq 2004-2008 and so some events in A-stan seem "new" when, in reality, it's not new at all - Abu M among them. Things are certainly worse in Afghanistan, but it's more a matter of degree IMO.

Personally, I'm skeptical of a "secure the cities" strategy, which is something David Killcullen advocated a few months ago. We've basically held the cities for eight years and that hasn't worked out too well. If, as it appears, we going to fully "operationalize" a COIN strategy, then our focus, IMO, needs to be on the provincial and district centers along with villages on key terrain, and expand out from there.