Think Progress | June 27, 2008

According to a new Pentagon report released today, “the Taliban has regrouped after its initial fall from power in Afghanistan. The new report offers a rather dim view of progress in the nearly 7-year-old war, declaring that the Taliban has ‘coalesced into a resilient insurgency’”:

Noting that insurgent violence continues to climb, the report said that despite efforts to capture and kill key leaders, the Taliban is likely to “maintain or even increase the scope and pace of its terrorist attacks and bombings in 2008.” At the same time, the Afghan Army and national police are progressing slowly, and still lack the trainers they need.

The report comes as the “number of foreign forces in Afghanistan killed in June has reached 39, the highest monthly toll of the war,” as CNN reported yesterday. More on Afghanistan in today’s Progress Report.
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FLASHBACK: U.S. Gave Green Light For Taliban Prison Attack – Report:

Reports out of the Middle East indicate that U.S. forces gave the green light for the Taliban to attack a government prison in Kandahar this past Friday and stood idly by while Taliban fighters violently freed more than 1000 inmates.

“Although clashes between Afghan security forces and the militants lasted for several hours, US-led troops did not intervene.”

This miraculous prison break occurred just days before Gordon Brown agreed to send hundreds more British troops into Afghanistan to put the British presence there at an all time high.

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