Mini-Tet In Kabul – Moon of Alabama

September 13, 2011

Mini-Tet In Kabul

A series of Taliban attacks are currently ongoing in Kabul including one on the ISAF headquarter and the U.S. and other embassies. Following the various Twitter feeds this sounds a bit like a mini version of a Tet offensive.

So much for the success of the night raids and the surge.

Update:

In comments Dan asks: "A microscopic Tet? Or just another bad day in an stalemated, interminable and grinding conflict."

This was of course no Tet offense in the sense of a huge countrywide surprise attack with many dead throughout the country. While the Mujaheddin attacks are now more frequent, more intense and more complex than ever they are not yet coordinated across the country.

But I am not looking at this from the sole military side, the number of people involved, killed or the damage done. Modern wars are won in the minds of the public. The Tet offensive convinced the U.S. public that there was nothing to win in Vietnam. It marked a turning point in the public mind.

Today saw coordinated attacks in the most guarded part of a secure Kabul defended by a ring of steel. It hit the U.S. embassy, the ISAF HQ, the NDS HQ, the border police HQ and other important places.

It will serve the same effect as the Tet offensive, which by the way ended in a military defeat for the Viet cong but was a success in the bigger sense.

A few days ago U.S. ambassador Crocker said the biggest problem Kabul has is the traffic. Today has shown that such is not really the case.

Posted by b on September 13, 2011 at 11:15 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Blood, murder, swearing and betrayal not withstanding… Sound track for this:
As Serious As Your Life
It’s a tragicomedy, and not a particularly good one; the news, that is…

Posted by: Uncle | Sep 13 2011 11:51 utc | 1

BBC: Afghan gunfight: Explosions and firing rock Kabul

Posted by: Uncle | Sep 13 2011 12:11 utc | 2

Tet was one single event. There could be more attacks like this in Kabul.

Posted by: alexno | Sep 13 2011 13:04 utc | 3

Looks like those lessons in self-defense are starting to pay off…

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 13 2011 13:54 utc | 4

All people on earth have the right of self determination. If you believe that, you have to wish the Afghans well in their struggle to live their own lives without foreign interference.

Posted by: ben | Sep 13 2011 14:17 utc | 5

Mini Tet in Kabul? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Tet offensive involved tens of thousands of combattants across an entire nation, lasted for weeks, and resulted in many thousands of dead and wounded.
A microscopic Tet? Or just another bad day in an stalemated, interminable and grinding conflict.

Posted by: dan | Sep 13 2011 14:29 utc | 6

I agree conceptually with what you are saying but not what will be the result because there is one major difference with the situation in the 70’s. Namely, this is an All Volunteer Military. Hardly anyone has family in the military and so very few people over here in US are following the war. Here in St Louis the big news was how badly the local football team (American Football) lost this weekend and how many of its players were injured in the process! People do continue to worry about the economy and most do feel the US should get out of Afghanistan but there is no passion on these issues and you see no significant demonstrations. Apathy is all pervasive. I don’t see this creating any more pressure on the US government to alter from their planned schedule. Certainly those in power in Afghanistan are in no hurry to see the US leave. They want to keep the US dollars flowing in, never mind the human and other cost to the ordinary people.

Posted by: Khalid Shah | Sep 13 2011 20:47 utc | 7

KS @ 7: Yep!

Posted by: ben | Sep 14 2011 3:19 utc | 8

Mrs Clinton has condemned the attacks in Kabul as ‘cowardly’ – forgetting, perhaps, that NATO has conducted more than 30,000 aerial sorties over Libya without sustaining a single casualty.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 14 2011 3:27 utc | 9

The US ambassador in Kabul obviously disagrees: Kabul attacks ‘not a big deal’ says US ambassador (Guardian):

The US ambassador Ryan Crocker said the attack needed to be put into perspective. “These were five guys that rumbled into town with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) under their car seats,” he said.
“They got into a building and did some harassment fire on us and Isaf. This really is not a very big deal, a hard day for the embassy and my staff, who behaved with enormous courage and dedication, but half a dozen RPG rounds from 800 metres away – that isn’t Tet, that’s harassment,” he said in reference to the Tet offensive in Vietnam.

(my emphasis – interesting he’s mentioning the Tet offensive)
What he obfuscates is that the attacks happened in the supposedly most secure part of Kabul.

Posted by: philippe | Sep 14 2011 12:59 utc | 10

b
If you cast your mind back to a few weeks ago, there was a similarly bloody “incident” inside the Kabul ring of steel when the British Council premises were attacked. It was big news here in the UK at any rate. Whilst US propagandists rely on the generally amnesiac condition of the public, the rather banal reality is that small-unit attacks in the key “international” areas of Kabul have been occuring at regular intervals for some time now.
Ironically, I was playing cricket with a military training contractor last night, who spent our entire post-match drinks session on his Blackberry to Kabul, as some of his firm’s personnel were involved in the fighting ( one Afghan fatality from the his mob ); his take was that the Taliban were being a lot smarter than the Iraq insurgency, as they avoid the really sickening mass civilian casualty events, that the level of violence is politically-calibrated, and that the Afghan security forces were reasonably robust at dealing with these kinds of small-unit attacks ( robust being “they didn’t run away” and were able to shoot back with some degree of efficacy ).
I think that the general public in the US/UK/Europe concluded quite some time ago that there was no “victory” around the corner in Afghanistan – in the end the arguments will revolve around what kind of “rearguard” or “spoiler” role cash-strapped Nato nations will be prepared to fund. The Taliban know this too – and they’re certainly not stupid enough to wastefully indulge in the kind of large-scale military offensives that play to Nato strengths ( it’s worth recalling that during their 1990’s campaigns against the NA, they were crap at them, and, moreover, were heavily dependent on substantial Pakistani, Saudi and Emirati tactical, financial, material and logistical support to mount them ).

Posted by: dan | Sep 14 2011 15:22 utc | 11

@dan – and before the attack on the British Council there was an attack on an international hotel.
It’s about every three weeks now that these strikes in Kabul come up.
Only nine guys this time but likely with prepositioned ammunition dumps. Over 21 hours to put them down. Imagine what they could do with a hundred people.
But yes, it is small scale and politically calibrated. One could even see this as part of the negotiations that will eventually come up now that the Taliban have opened a bureau in Qatar.

Posted by: b | Sep 14 2011 15:30 utc | 12

Well, to the Afghan’s credit – they managed to subdue the resistance more rapidly than their Mumbai counterparts, who took 2-3 times as long.
There are a number of considerations militating against larger scale attacks – they require far greater degrees of coordination/communications; larger “plots” are more susceptible to hostile penetration and interdiction; the training/personnel quality burden is much higher – and there’s no indication that the Taliban and/or their associates can field this many “quality troops” at one go – such that you might lose the ability to mount similar attacks for 6-12 months whilst you reconstitute; you have to anticipate that some of the attacking force will be captured – adding an extra burden of security/intelligence risk.
Above all, why are the Taliban and their associates going to adopt a “use-em or lose-em” approach, when, in the longer term, they want to maintain a “threat-in-being” against a Kabul government that is going to have progressively less Nato protection as time goes on. It’s not going to be lost on the Taliban that it took them the best part of 4 years to reconstitute after the initial US/Nato invasion.

Posted by: dan | Sep 15 2011 11:58 utc | 13

It’s pointless trying to paint a credible smiley-face on this incident. Too many things went wrong for US-NATO for them to read it as anything other than a complete and utter debacle.
1. Their security cordon failed.
2. Their local intel sources failed.
3. Their illusion of skill and competence was destroyed by the fact that it took almost 24 hours to quell the attackers, despite their being confined to a single location.
4. The attack seems to have unfolded exactly the way the Taliban planned it and that’s the kind of planning that wins wars: even fake wars.
The Afghans are prepared to risk their lives for what they believe in. The Yankees are never quite sure what they believe in (as it changes from day to day). But whatever it happens to be on any particular day, they obviously don’t believe it’s worth dying for.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 18 2011 5:26 utc | 14

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