Unsure of whether civilians were inside the compound, the Marines had an interpreter talk to the insurgents, said an official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly. After some time, a number of women and children left the compound, the military official said.
The insurgents denied that any more civilians were inside, the official said, but the Marines held their fire anyway. About 4 p.m. (7:30 a.m. ET), in the midst of the standoff, another group of women and children emerged from the compound, the official said. As of 4:30 p.m., the Marines were holding all fire and waiting out the insurgents, the official said.
Finally, a screaming woman emerged from the compound with a bullet wound to her hand, Pelletier said. Then, another group of women came out, covered from head to toe, according to custom, he said. The Marines attended to the wounded woman while the others walked away.
When the Marines went into the compound, they discovered that it empty, Pelletier said. That's when they realized the fighters had dressed up as women to escape, he said.
This is an absolute farce. Despite the rather abysmal level of writing demonstrated by this CNN piece, it is obvious that the RoE (Rules of Engagement) in Afghanistan have tightened to the point that they have throttled any hope we may have had of getting the upper hand on these fanatics.
If it's as simple as waiting until you find some women (rarely seen, but not scarce in Afghanistan) and hiding amongst them long enough to get changed, we'll never kill any Taliban again.
I had hoped to stay away from this subject, but even if Despair is a sin, I'm feeling a bit of it about the prognosis for any of these fights. Some of that was triggered by an article on Algeria that I read yesterday, suggesting that the government is beating them militarily, but the pressure the Salafists are putting on the average Mohammed on the street is getting the job done.
Balance of force, balance of terror, whatever you want to call it. People can be intimidated by those who show themselves capable of killing and torturing them. Rare is the person who will prefer to be killed (unpleasantly, at that) than to knuckle under.
One of the key problems in Algeria that tipped the balance against the non-islamists was the government's decision to disarm all of the civilian "Patriot" units in the towns and villages. These were standard Local Defence groups (from what little I've been able to find about them), apparently quite effective at keeping the bad-asses out, and were disbanded by the government when the islamists had been "defeated".
Those fuckers are defeated when they're all dead, which takes a lot of work and a relentless bloody-mindedness. There is the eternal argument that if you give arms to these local groups there's no saying who will end up with them. This is a valid point if there is a scarcity of weapons, but in this early 21ieme siecle those are about as hard to get as the clap. Assault weapons are readily available to anyone that c an afford them, and they're not too expensive. What does make them scarce is government control.
The best way to contain the bad guys is to allow people to defend themselves in a locally-organized fashion, to fill in the gaps that the army and police can't manage. That may not work in Afghanistan, so a different plan is necessary.
As a refinement of my previous position on splitting the country and backing the non-Pashtun parts of it, go back to backing warlords. Support the ones who oppose the Taliban, and obliterate their compounds from orbit if they turn on you. Your aid should be lots of tanks, artillery, low-tech stuff that needs to be centralized to be effective. That gives them firepower, and gives you fixed targets to hit if they step out of line. Divide and contain, if not conquer, has worked forever.
In any event, get the hell out of Afghanistan because our current capacity is rapidly being shown to be incapacity. Some Surge; more troops just gives more chances to not do the job.
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