The Political Spin of Terror

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/04/pakistan.taliban/index.html

Politics makes its way into terror organizations. I dont feel this is anything new, but the fact that the taliban knows PR gives an insight into just how organized and extensive these organizations are.

now, i dont know that they have a dental plan, but they certainly are more organized than personally i would like for my neighborhood brand of lunatic religious fanatic. and i dont know how much of their crap the average human believes, but its easy to see that they sure are doing their best to run a public relations department. although you have to admit they arent that good at it.

seriously, if "thousands" of pakistani soldiers had been killed like they have claimed, it would of gotten out. i know the pakistani military has a pretty solid block on news going in and out of the area, but nothing is water tight. Im frankly wondering what kind of fighting exactly is going on between these forces.

Taliban tactics are to hit, run, and hide among the population. This area however, is where they have been strong, and had a tiny little corner of the world to call their own. They are fairly stuck, geographically, and militarily, since this has been the place they always had to run to, and now there's nowhere for them to go, as a group.

since so many people have been displaced by the fighting, i would speculate that there is relatively little in the way of civilian population for the taliban to disappear into. That said, the infrastructure of the population was left behind, with plenty of places to hide and ambush from. There's not a lot of information coming out of the area, but i think probably the pakistani military is rooting out taliban using tactics with a huge cost to infrastructure, something the international community would not approve of. (though anyone who thinks military action should magically avoid damage to everything but the enemy is probably sucking car fumes for fun)

so we see then, if a well armed, determined insurgency cannot stand against even a relatively poorly trained army when the ability to hide in the population is taken out of the situation and military might is used probably without regard to losses in infrastructure.