Taliban change tactic,aim for higher casualties

This year the spring offensive by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has a new and terrifying face.

This year the spring offensive by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has a new and terrifying face: the insurgents are using suicide bombers who create high casualties to sow terror and are planning an assassination campaign as well,Afghan and US military analysts say.

The insurgents deadly bet is that fear will trump anger and that Afghans will lose any faith they had in their governments security forces and eventually turn to the Taliban. You have to ask yourself,If you were the Taliban now,what would you do? said Gen Jack Keane,who retired from the Army in 2003 and is now a consultant to Gen David H Petraeus,the NATO commander for Afghanistan. Given the massing of NATO forces in the south,the answer appears to be attack the urban,civilian population,creating widespread insecurity in an effort to reinforce the existing resentment of foreign troops and doubts about President Hamid Karzais government.

In less than four weeks,116 Afghans have died in seven suicide attacks,most recently in Faryab Province on Saturday. Two of the attacks,one in Jalalabad on February 19 and another in Kandahar on February 12,involved multiple assailants and were carefully choreographed to obtain a high death toll and maximum media coverage.

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This is a striking change from Afghan suicide bombings of just six months ago,in which the bombers exacted few casualties. These new tactics highlight the challenge of an adaptive insurgency with a reservoir of potential fighters,many of them madrassa students in Pakistans tribal areas.

President Karzai has compounded the problem,some Afghan analysts say,by insisting the Taliban are not to blame for violence and that they are upset brothers rather than mortal enemies. Underlying latest attacks are the regions geopolitics. Both Pakistan and Iran are known to be supporting the Taliban and play out their antagonism to the US on Afghan soil.