The Taliban are planning a major winter offensive combining their diverse factions in a push on the Afghan capital, Kabul, Western intelligence analysts and sources among the Taliban have revealed.
The thrust will involve a concerted attempt to take control of surrounding provinces, a bid to cut the key commercial highway linking the capital with the eastern city of Jalalabad, and operations designed to tie down British and other Nato occupation troops in the south.
Since earlier this year, the Taliban have made steady progress towards Kabul from their heartland in Kandahar. "They do not expect to capture the capital but aim to destabilise the increasingly fragile puppet Karzai government and influence Western public opinion to force a withdrawal of troops", an analyst said
A winter offensive breaks with tradition. "Usually all Afghans do in the winter is try and stay warm," said a Western military intelligence specialist in Kabul. "The coming months are likely to see intense fighting, fidayeen bombings and roadside landmines. That is a measure of how much the Taliban have changed," the Observer News Service reported.
It is not necessary to have "sources among Western intelligence analysts and the Taliban" to know this "news". Taliban officially announced its winter plans to attack Kabul a few months ago in several of their statements. But Western media prefers to ignore them and keep readers in an information vacuum, like in Chechnya, giving a chance to different Western "intelligence analysts" and "military specialists" to earn money by retelling old news.
Dmitry Orlov
KC
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