
Saturday, June 06, 2009
DTN News: Pakistan - The Battle Within - Pakistan Diary: Taliban Tactics
DTN News: Pakistan - The Battle Within - Pakistan Diary: Taliban Tactics
(NSI News Source Info) ISLAMABAD - June 6, 2009: Twisted hunks of metal lay strewn across the road.
It's the result of a brazen raid by the Taliban on a convoy ferrying prisoners into the North West Frontier Province's main city of Peshawar.
Hit-and-run raids are more cost-effective than mass attacks on security forces. Imran Khan, Al Jazeera's reporter in Pakistan, is filing regular dispatches from the country as the army battles Taliban fighters in the North West Frontier Province.
This high profile raid suggests there has been a subtle shift in the Pakistani Taliban's tactics.
When this war began the Taliban stood their ground and the army had to fight them house-to-house, street-to-street.
Now though, it seems the Taliban have renewed an old tactic: hit-and-run raids.
These raids are incredibly difficult to deal with.
They aim to wear down troops' morale as constant vigil has to maintained.
The raids often hit low-level target, remote checkposts, supply lines, mobile patrols.
In the case of the Talib's raid on a prisoner convoy details are still emerging.
But it fits a pattern that has worked so successfully in Iraq, Afghanistan and here in Pakistan.
The raids are, to use a business term, cost-effective. All it takes is a few armed men and some fire power.

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