BREAKING NEWS: TALIBAN FLEXING MUSCLES IN AFGHANISTAN

Taliban flexing muscles in Afghanistan

By Laura King

Los Angeles Times

http://tiny.cc/tbjm2

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — With back-to-back strikes at symbols of U.S. power in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement appears determined to build prestige in advance of an expected confrontation on its home turf of Kandahar province.

Two high-profile attacks within 24 hours — a rare frontal assault Wednesday on sprawling U.S.-run Bagram Air Base, and a suicide strike a day earlier on one of the U.S. military convoys that traverse the capital, Kabul — appeared calculated to demonstrate the insurgents' ability to strike at will beyond their traditional bastions in the country's south and east.

The Taliban also may be seeking to telegraph resiliency in the face of a concerted U.S.-led campaign in recent months to capture and kill mid-level insurgent field commanders. The rebels also may be hoping to further erode public confidence in beleaguered President Hamid Karzai as he prepares to convene a large-scale jirga, or tribal-consultative meeting, at month's end.
The insurgents "are always trying to make a point," said Col. Wayne Shanks, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

Taken together, the strikes in Bagram and Kabul seemed intended to show "alarm and confusion" at a politically and militarily sensitive juncture, he said.
The attack on Bagram, a heavily fortified enclave an hour's drive from the capital, began early Wednesday. A squad of attackers, some in suicide vests and some clad in uniforms resembling those used by foreign forces, struck the base with rockets, grenades and small-arms fire, military officials and local police said.

A full-on assault against such a large, well-protected installation had almost no chance of success. But in the eyes of some, the insurgents likely reaped propaganda points for trying because Bagram carries heavy symbolic value.
The base is the seat of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and houses a jail that, for the insurgents, is a hated symbol of U.S. detention practices. While the insurgents did not penetrate the perimeter defenses, they managed to bloody the defenders: Nine troops were wounded and a U.S. contractor was killed.
Although Taliban losses were far heavier — about a dozen dead, according to NATO — the attack showed the insurgency's willingness to expend fighters on what was essentially a suicidal mission.

Afghan police and military officials described battles that went on for hours as coalition forces hunted down the attackers in farm fields surrounding the base.

The base was on a state of heightened alert for much of the day, with parts of the installation cleared of personnel and military flights in and out of the airfield employing defensive measures, such as use of flares.

While Wednesday's assault at Bagram would have required careful planning, the suicide bombing of a convoy a day earlier was a swiftly seized opportunity.

It would have been difficult for a bomber to track and target the motorcade of armored SUVs. Such convoys are often used to ferry VIPs around the city.
The identities of the five Americans killed in the blast were not released, but it is possible that at least one of the victims was a high-ranking officer.
Canadian officials said a colonel also slain in the attack was their highest-ranking officer killed to date in Afghanistan.

Attacks like the Tuesday strike, which killed 12 Afghans, tend to fan resentment of foreign forces, even when Taliban fighters are the ones killing noncombatants.

Many Afghans feel endangered by the presence of Western troops on crowded urban roadways because the foreign forces are a magnet for insurgent attacks and bystanders usually take the brunt.