How The Taliban Will Disrupt The Afghan Election

An Afghan policeman keeps watch after rockets hit Kabul in advance of the 2009 presidential election. Ahmad Masood / Reuters-Landov

An Inviting Target -- Newsweek

The Taliban says it didn't care about the election—until the Marines decided to safeguard it.

Taliban subcommander Mullah Saleh Khan—who, in the insurgent hierarchy, is the equivalent of a U.S. Army lieutenant leading a unit of 40 to 50 fighters—used to be nonchalant about Thursday's presidential election. His cohorts in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, where the Taliban's nearly eight-year-old insurgency is perhaps the strongest, felt so empowered until this summer that they hardly noticed an election was coming. Then the Marines arrived in July, beginning an intense campaign of heliborne operations to disrupt the insurgents.

Read more ....

My Comment: The Taliban seem confident that they will be able to disrupt the elections in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. We will only know a few days after the election if they were successful.

In the meantime, the U.S. marines are confident that the Taliban will be staying put in Pakistan by winter.