Sounds plausible, but that sure wasn't the picture offered by the Pentagon at the time. Whatever. Question remains where the Taleban get their support from. Musharraf claims his ISI is not involved, Al-Qaeda doesn't have the capability to provide such loads of military hardware, funds maybe. Iran might be possible, but I don't think they are so stupid to give the US the ideal pretext to attack them. Growing local support seems the only option, which might even be more worrying to NATO, since that would mean we are now being considered occupiers instead of liberators.
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Originally Posted by Botnst
They (Taliban & Al Qaeda) never were militarily defeated in Kandahar. Since most Taliban are Pashtun, when they abandoned Kabul some went with the Al Qaedistas to Tora Bora but most of them went back to their tribal homeland. Most of those that went to Tora Bora died or were jailed. Some escaped into Pakistan and either stayed with Pashtuns in Pakistan or filtered back into Kandahar. The deal that Karzai (himself a Pashtun) reached with the Pashtun tribal chiefs was that so long as the former Taliban stayed "former" that Kabul would leave Kandahar semi-autonomous (like the other provinces).
But since the Al Qaedistas have linked-up with the former Taliban in Kandahar and have begun suicide bombings, and expanded into other provinces, the military let Karzai know that they were going-in unless the tribal leaders reeastablished control. The tribal leaders informed Karzai that they were powerless, Karzai was let-off tehir formal agreement, and the military went in.
When dealing with tribal cultures, the military in Afghanistan took the lead from the Special Forces and CIA and have worked within the paradigm as much as possible. This is in contrast with the military in Iraq, which has tried to run the occupation without concern for tribal influence.
Bot
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