War of Attrition

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail reports on what's happening in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. To the extent that Afghanistan makes the news the reports are usually about whether and when we're going to pull out and how bad things are going there. Thus it's good to get the insight of people like Roggio who follow the day to day grind of the conflict. Here's his summary:

Coalition and Afghan special operations teams have hit hard at the Taliban and allied groups' leadership and rank and file during more than 7,000 raids throughout Afghanistan over the past six months.

Approximately 7,100 special operations counterterrorism missions have been conducted between May 30 and Dec. 2 of this year, the International Security Assistance Force told The Long War Journal. More than 600 insurgent leaders were killed or captured. In addition, more than 2,000 enemy fighters have been killed, and over 4,100 fighters have been captured.

The enemy commanders and fighters killed or captured are from various jihadist groups battling Coalition and Afghan forces, including the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Islami, al Qaeda, and the Islamic Jihad Group.

The numbers of insurgents killed or captured include only those targeted in special operations raids, ISAF stated. These numbers do not include Taliban and allied fighters killed or captured during conventional counterinsurgency operations, or during massed Taliban assaults on Coalition and Afghan bases.

Within the same time frame, special operations troops also completed more than 2,500 humanitarian operations, including the provision of medical and educational assistance.

This is not to say that things there are rosy, but it does look as if we have the upper hand and that being an insurgent, particularly one eager to climb the leadership ladder, is a very dicey career choice.