“The undermanned forces of Operation Enduring Freedom could not hope to prevent all of this traffic. Nor could ISAF be expected to do much, since their jurisdiction was not extended beyond Kabul until October 2003. By November 2002, even so, 475 weapons caches had been discovered, containing 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 70,000 mortar rounds and 43,000 rockets.1 Omar’s counter-attack began in the spring of 2003 in four southern provinces: Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul. They were the obvious place t...o start. Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace, was the spiritual and historical capital of the Pashtuns. They had successfully defended their home territory many times over the centuries, and their deep knowledge of the terrain would play to their strengths again. The choice was made easier by the almost total absence of American troops, who were focused on the north-east of the country in their bid to root out al-Qaida. When the first Nato troops at last deployed to the south in late 2005, they were to discover that the US had not even been watching the region by satellite.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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