The Taliban collection (2006 onwards)

[TheCurmudgeon]

I have to agree with Rex that this is not a popular uprising in the Maoist sense. My limited experience in the south and west indicated the average "man on the street" did not like the Taliban any better than they liked the coalition. This is a power struggle by a minority group not a mass popular uprising.

I will go one step further and suggest that to try to use any COIN doctrine outside the two major cities may be a mistake or at least a waisted effort. Certainly you must fight remembering that the ultimate goal is a stable pro-coalition government in place (i.e. don't randomly kill civilians, don't use airpower or artillery when you can do the same job with a more precision tools, don't appear to the locals that your life is worth any more than theirs is). We can certainly loose the war that way but I don't think that you will defeat the Taliban through attempts to win the hearts and minds of the average villager with a well or a road. I think you are going to have to defeat them by crushing, overwhelming force directed against the Taliban leadership.