AFGHANISTAN: TALIBAN ATTACKS SIGNAL START OF SPRING OFFENSIVE

[Flabbergasted]

Taliban fighters have launched a series of attacks this month across western, southern, and eastern Afghanistan -- signaling that their expected spring offensive is now under way.

NATO officials say the Taliban has concentrated forces in at least five southern and western provinces of Afghanistan -- Helmand, Kandahar, Farah, Uruzgan, and Ghor.

NATO spokesman Colonel Tom Collins says militants in those areas are preparing to carry out attacks in those provinces as part of an "expected spring offensive."

Offensive Under Way?

But Taliban commanders say they began their spring offensive on February 2 when militants seized the town of Musa Qala in Helmand Province.

Militants continue to control Musa Qala, which is about 25 kilometers from a key reconstruction project in southern Afghanistan, the Kajaki hydroelectric dam.

Meanwhile, correspondents at Kajaki report that several hundred British Royal Marines have been fighting on a daily basis to keep the Taliban far enough from the dam so that reconstruction work can continue.

Security analysts say operations near the dam are likely to be the major focus of fighting throughout the spring.

Meanwhile, in the western Farah Province, several hundred Taliban fighters seized the remote district of Bakwa on February 19. It was the second time this month that the Afghan government has lost control of a district.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/pp022507.shtml

[hedgehog]

1. Yet somehow this happened below the radar.

Second time this month the Afghan government lost control of a district? Maybe if someone had shaved their head while claiming to have fathered Anna Nicole Smith's baby we would have heard about this.