Jo’s Cafe

Missed this one in my normal news travels.  Had to get it from the SGM.

AP Exclusive: U.S. Special Forces clear out Taliban suicide cell threatening Kabul

TAGAB VALLEY, Afghanistan — While the southern city of Kandahar reels from a series of suicide attacks, Kabul is enjoying a respite because of a little-publicized operation that officials say disrupted Taliban suicide training cells and scattered hundreds of fighters.

After 115 suicide attacks this year nationwide, including a rash of bombings this fall that killed almost 40 people in Kabul, the Afghan capital hasn’t suffered a suicide attack in two months.

Military officials had feared a bloody winter campaign in Kabul, saying 300 to 500 Taliban fighters had massed 60 miles north of the city in this isolated valley from which the earlier wave of attacks was launched.

But the operation in the Tagab Valley early last month wiped out three training compounds and drove out the Taliban fighters, U.S. Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Lynn Ashley told The Associated Press this week.

U.S. and NATO commanders are portraying the joint U.S.-Afghan operation as a model for taming the Taliban as it rebounds from its ouster by the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

The militants had been able to gather so close to the capital partly because of the region’s rough terrain, Ashley said. Minor operations had been conducted against them, but never a full-scale push.

There have been a few moments of lost sleep due to IEDs and such for me, but this made me sleep a lot better that night I got it.