I wish I knew what to make of this. An American general recently told the Associated Press that the 200 insurgents intercepted and attacked while crossing from Pakistan last week were ill-equipped fighters, some wearing plastic bags on their feet.
"Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, said the insurgent leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani, recruited and sent unemployed and untrained men to fight in Afghanistan."
It's still winter in Afghanistan. How does the Taliban get 200 recruits, some with only plastic bags on their feet, to march into Afghanistan? Where do they go? Somewhere along the line they have to be properly equipped and armed and trained.
Our soldiers and the Brits and US forces all say that the insurgents they encounter fight well and fight hard, showing good discipline and sophisticated tactics. That takes some doing. If they're not being trained in Pakistan that means that the Taliban must be operating a large and advanced training establishment within Afghanistan itself. That in turn would require the Taliban to have secure control over a fair bit of Afghan territory.
Taking out 200-unarmed, unequipped, raw recruits is a lot less satisfying that defeating the same number of insurgents after the Taliban had expended its resources to train and arm them. It also suggests that the Taliban has a sufficient supply of recruits that it can risk losing them in droves by sending them so ill-prepared to cross the border region.
This isn't good.
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