Wednesday, February 24, 2010

'Behind Taliban lines'

The Frontline program of this title, which aired last night, is worth watching; the second half of the program (also worth watching) dealt with Pakistan's public schools, mentioned earlier here.

2 comments:

hank_F_M said...

LFC

Interesting

The "tank" about 6 minutes in is a truck or trailer from the "48th Brigade". The 48 GA National Guard Brigade just got home. Though it could be a support brigade of some type.

Definitely amateur hour by both Taliban and police.

The Taliban appear to non-local. If a long-term force were to move into the area it could be developed in to a pro-government area but with out a long-term commitment it is Taliban country. But like the clip said it is the German sector and they are not doing aggressive patrolling.

LFC said...

"Definitely amateur hour by both Taliban and [Afghan] police"

Yes, for most of the segment, but at the very end the narrator observed that, some time after Frontline's 'embedded' Afghan journalist left the Taliban group in question (who are loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, apparently), they overran the police outpost and killed all the policemen there (after the police had staged some kind of raid on them, IIRC).

So it ended on a much grimmer, much less 'amateurish' note -- the possible message being that even if Taliban fighters can't always manage to denote bombs when they want to, they can still be dangerous.