Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteGuerrilla fighters may see themselves in many ways, most of such enjoying winning as may happen with any given ambush or raid and converting loss into some other version of winning, whether by merely surviving a larger enemy over time or making claims to martyrdom.
There's one thing, however, that spells, means, and may be understood as a . . . setback: the inability to transition from a guerrilla force into a conventional one.
Justice has nothing to do with this, and if you think God does, read up on Mao Zedong.
Basically, and as Napoleon might have had it, the bigger boy wins. How he gets there: politics AKA the better program that converts the village or turns the enemy's army.
In Afghanistan, the heart and sacrifice on the guerrilla's side that puts up the kidnapping, the suicide bombers, and the roadside bomb-and-ambush routine wants to grow into a conventional confrontation with forces larger than itself. This is how it goes:
"Several dozen insurgents attacked the convoy from an extensive trench system and several compounds with small arms, machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Taliban fighters reinforced their fighting positions from the village of Musa Qalah throughout the daylong battle.
Coalition aircraft and artillery engaged the Taliban positions. The initial estimate by the ground force commander assessed that more than 100 insurgents were killed in the engagement." [1]
This is different from harrassing an army or having it bomb residences with ambiguous field and political results: it's the field of battle.
There's no question about who controls the property afterwards even if the one battle (or two or three) should not define the war.
"In operations last night, elements of 1st Brigade, 205th Afghan National Army Corps, advised by coalition forces made contact with a large group of insurgents prior to an attempted ambush while conducting a combat patrol near Kakrak village in Oruzgan province."
The article pieced together from Armed Forces Press Services (AFPS) press releases indicates both the strength of the Taleban in the southern provinces as well as Afghan National Army Corps resolve to not only meet that challenge to its authority but also produce a "shut up or play" gambit that draws the Taleban to engage the state's military and supporting coalition in force.
1. "Hundreds of Taliban Fighters Killed in Afghan Battles." Reuters, citing The Tension, September 27, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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