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Afghan strategy of U.S. effective against Taliban

This has been the most violent year for Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The U.S. Army is moving in smaller numbers to lure the Taliban out of hiding for fights they cannot win. The result: More than 1,200 enemy deaths this year, including high-level commanders. But it is also a strategy with profound risks, and one that may be difficult to sustain in some provinces, regions so unstable that commanders call one of them, Zabul Province, the "Fallujah of Afghanistan".

Much is made about the high-tech gear that American soldiers carry: body armor, rapid-firing machine guns, night vision goggles. But the chief advantage of the US military - especially in a low-intensity conflict, pitted against a crudely trained force like the Taliban - is training and air power. Taliban fighters, meanwhile, appear to gain courage from numbers, the ability to swarm a smaller enemy unit. A sense of safety in numbers, however, is often the Taliban`s undoing if a U.S. platoon can fix an enemy`s position long enough for aircraft or other infantry units to arrive.

In the long-term, the Afghan National Army (ANA) will have to take over the defense of their country, but U.S. military commanders at the ground level say that time is still a long way off. ANA fighters are enthusiastic learners, and they are picking up a great deal of real-life training under American advisers in real missions. But the ANA still have a disconcerting habit of shooting themselves with their own weapons.

"The problem is muzzle discipline," says 2nd Lieutenant Ben Wisnioski, a commander of an ANA unit based in Qalat. In the week before the elections, Lieutenant Wisnioski lost three ANA soldiers to self-inflicted wounds.