ABC is reporting that a attack in underway in Eastern Afghanistan on a compound containing a “high value target” which might even be Osama bin Laden himself.

For the past two days, U.S. and NATO forces have been conducting a major attack against a compound in a remote area of Eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden or another senior al Qaeda leader may be hiding, ABC News has learned.

According to eyewitnesses and local reporters in Kunar province, Coalition forces launched a fierce attack on a small enclave in the village of Mandaghel, approximately 17 miles from the border with Pakistan, on Friday afternoon. Warplanes pounded the positions ; U.S. special forces and Afghan National Army soldiers moved in shortly afterwards.

The assault appeared to meet stiff resistance from militants at the compound. Heavy artillery and gunfire could be heard for hours, local witnesses said . A handful of civilians were reportedly wounded in the strike. Though sealed off from outside access, the area now appears to be under coalition control.

U.S. officials declined to identify who the operation was targeting, but indicated they were after a “High Value Target” (HVT) . Official sources would not rule out that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden himself was the intended victim.

Will Collier evidently successfully confirmed the authenticity of this amusing email war story:

Hi everyone. I’m still alive but freezing my tail off. We got 8 inches of snow last week and it reached 5 degrees below zero that night. That’s not why I’m e-mailing though.

You may have heard about a suicide car bomb attack in Kabul last Thursday. It was at one of our FOB’s (Forward Observation Bases) about 27 miles from here.

But the real story is why no one was killed. We employ several thousand Afghans on our various bases. Not to mention the economy that is fed by the money these locals are making. Some are laborers and builders, but some are skilled workers. We even have one Afghan that just became OSHA qualified, the first ever. Some are skilled HVAC workers.

Anyway, there is this one Afghan that we call Rambo. We have actually given him a couple of sets of the new ACU uniforms (the new Army digital camouflage) with the name tag RAMBO on it. His entire family was killed by the Taliban and his home was where our base currently resides. So this guy really had nowhere else to go.

He has reached such a level of trust with US Forces that his job is to stand at the front gate and basically be the first security screening. Since he can’t have a weapon, he found a big red pipe. So he stands there at the front gate in his US Army ACU uniform with his red pipe. If a vehicle approaches the gate too fast or fails to stop he slams his pipe down on their hood… He’s like the first line of defense.

Last Thursday at 0930 hrs a Toyota Corolla packed with explosives and some Jack Ass that thinks he has 72 Virgins waiting for him approached the gate. When he saw Rambo he must have recognized him and known the gig was up. But he needed to get to the gate to detonate and take American lives. So he slams his foot on the gas which almost causes the metal gate to go up but mostly catches on the now broken windshield.

Rambo fearlessly ran to the vehicle, reached thru the window and jerked the suicide bomber out of the vehicle before he could detonate and commenced to putting some red pipe to his heathen ass. He detained the guy until the MP got there. The vehicle only exploded when they tried to push it off base with a robot but know one was hurt.

I’m still waiting for someone to give this guy a medal or something. Nothing less than instant US citizenship or something. A hat was passed around and a lot of money was given to him in thanks by both soldiers and civilians that are working over here.

I guess I just wanted to share this because I want people to know that it’s working over here. They have tasted freedom. This makes it worth it to me.

Hat tip to PJM.

Anne Applebaum, writing at Slate, has the solution for ending the Taliban’s ability to fund itself, and gain Afghan rural support, via the covert trade in opium.

She’s perfectly right.

The Times reports that US forces apprehended Iranians up to no good in Iraq, and clearly operating in cahoots with Shiite leaders and Iraq Government officials.

The American military said Tuesday that it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against American forces. Evidence also emerged that some detainees had been involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.

In its first official confirmation of last week’s raids, the military said it had confiscated maps, videos, photographs and documents in one of the raids on a site in Baghdad. The military confirmed the arrests of five Iranians, and said three of them had been released.

American officials have long said that the Iranian government interferes in Iraq, but the arrests, in the compound of one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political leaders, were the first since the American invasion in which officials were offering evidence of the link.

The raids threaten to upset the delicate balance of the three-way relationship among the United States, Iran and Iraq. The Iraqi government has made extensive efforts to engage Iran in security matters in recent months, and the arrests of the Iranians could scuttle those efforts.

Some Iraqis questioned the timing of the arrests, suggesting that the Bush administration had political motives. The arrests were made just days before the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.

The Iraqi government has kept silent on the arrests, but Tuesday night officials spoke of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations by Iraq’s government and its fractured political elite over how to handle the situation.

Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, had invited the two Iranians during his visit to Tehran, his spokesman said Sunday, but by Tuesday, some Iraqi officials began to question if Mr. Talabani had in fact made the invitation. His office was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

Con Coughlin, in the Telegraph last week, discussed more of Iran’s activities.

Cpl Daniel James, who acted as the official translator for Lt-Gen David Richards, the British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, has been charged with “prejudicing the safety of the state” by passing information “calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy” to a foreign power, whose identity sources have suggested is Iran.

Irrespective of the outcome of the James case, the mere suggestion that Iran should be seeking to recruit someone with access to the innermost counsels of Nato’s high command is indicative both of Teheran’s intense interest in Nato’s activities in Afghanistan, and its determination to ensure that the West is not allowed to succeed in transforming the country from Islamic dictatorship into stable democracy.

It also makes a mockery of the recent suggestion, advanced in both Washington and London, that the only way to resolve the region’s difficulties is by engaging in a constructive dialogue with Teheran. Whether it be in Iraq or Afghanistan, the over-riding priority of the regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is to ensure the coalition’s efforts at nation-building end in failure.

As in Iraq, the history of Iran’s involvement in Afghanistan has been complex, but rarely benign. During the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, the Iranians supported one of the fiercest Mujahideen groups. More recently, the Iranians helped hundreds of al-Qa’eda fighters to escape from Afghanistan following the coalition’s military campaign to remove the Taliban from power in 2001. Recent intelligence reports have indicated that many senior al-Qa’eda leaders — including two of Osama bin Laden’s sons — are still living in Teheran under the protection of the Revolutionary Guards, where they are being groomed for a possible takeover of the al-Qa’eda leadership…

Given the extent of Iran’s interests in the region, it might appear strange that Nato commanders have appeared reluctant even to discuss the possibility that the Iranians might have their own agenda in upsetting coalition attempts to establish an effective government, particularly when commanders in Iraq have been frank in blaming the Iranians for helping to orchestrate the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many soldiers.

The reason for this apparent reticence on the part of Nato commanders is that, given the limited resources at their disposal, they have a big enough challenge dealing with the threat posed by the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, without running the risk of extending their field of operations elsewhere. But all that might soon change if, as some intelligence reports suggest, concrete evidence emerges that Iran is actively supporting and providing equipment to Taliban-related groups fighting Nato forces in Afghanistan.

“The Iranians are playing a very clever game in Afghanistan,” a Western intelligence official based in Kabul recently told me. “On the surface, they give the impression they have no interest in what is going on, but behind the scenes they are working hard to influence groups such as the Taliban who are causing Nato the most problems.”

Which would explain why the heavily fortified Iranian embassy in central Kabul, which is located less than a mile from the British mission, is second in size only to that of the sprawling American embassy.

If, as now seems likely, the Iranians are to become serious players in the new Great Game taking place in Afghanistan, then it is essential that Nato be given sufficient numbers of combat troops to ensure that the hazardous mission it has been asked to undertake ultimately ends in victory.

And Depkafile reports that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer has been identified commanding Palestinian forces.

since Monday, Dec. 25, two changes were detected in the Palestinian offensive: A new type of homemade missile called Al Buraq 2 (after the Western Wall Jewish shrine in Jerusalem), and a new unit, calling itself the Mujahiddin Brigades, identified by military experts as the first Palestinian terrorist unit set up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ al Quds Brigades.

This group’s first action was to fire the new missiles at Kibbutz Nahal Oz Monday. They were diagnosed at first as mortars, but the fragments did not match any ordnance seen before. It was then discovered that the Mujahiddin Brigades units – consisting of Hamas, Jihad Islami, Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Popular Resistance Committees operatives – are commanded by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer.

Such direct Iranian command of front-line Palestinian missile units is another innovation; it did not occur even on the Hizballah side of the of July-August Lebanon war.

Monday, too, the Americans disclosed the capture in Baghdad of Iranian officers, members of the same RG al Quds Brigades, on another front line: against Iraqi and coalition forces. It looks as though the Islamic Republic has gone into action in Iraq and Gaza in reprisal for the tepid sanctions the UN Security Council imposed Saturday, Dec. 23, for its continuing pursuit of uranium enrichment.

The Guardian reports:

A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. A Taliban spokesman denied the claim.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. Two associates also were killed, it said.

There was no immediate confirmation from Afghan officials or visual proof offered to support the claim. A U.S. spokesman said “various sources” were used to confirm Osmani’s identity.

Osmani, regarded as one of three top associates of Omar, is the highest-ranking Taliban leader the coalition has claimed to have killed or captured since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting bin Laden.

Perhaps they could have saved themselves trouble by killing him a lot earlier. There is a report that he was captured and released by US forces in July of 2002.

Late July 2002: Taliban General Reportedly Captured, but Released After Questioning US Special Forces apprehend Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani, a top general and one of the six most-wanted Taliban, in Kandahar. He is flown to a detention center north of Kabul for interrogation, but is released a few weeks later and escapes to Pakistan. Contradicting the statements of many soldiers in Kandahar, the Defense Intelligence Agency says it “has no knowledge that Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani was ever in US custody in Afghanistan.” [Washington Times, 12/18/2002]

And here:

U.S. troops say that the military mistakenly released one of the most-wanted Taliban leaders in Afghanistan in the summer based on faulty intelligence.

U.S. Special Forces soldiers said that in late July, a Green Beret A-Team, backed by about 20 local Afghan fighters, apprehended Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani as he left his compound at daybreak in a town west of Kandahar. Soldiers identified him as Osmani, handcuffed him and brought him by truck to Kandahar.
Osmani, among the top six most-wanted Taliban, was flown to a detention center at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, for interrogation, the Special Forces soldiers said. He was one of the Taliban’s top generals, leading thousands of troops as coalition forces ousted the hard-line regime.

But, according to these soldiers, Task Force 180 — the overall command in Afghanistan — released Osmani a few weeks later.

U.S. government spokesmen expressed skepticism about the soldiers’ account in written responses to The Washington Times.

This Washington Postarticle says that many Taliban leaders were allowed to escape to Pakistan:

The Taliban has been driven from power, but almost all its top leaders remain at large, in many cases through battlefield deals that exchanged the peaceful surrender of territory for the safety of the defeated commander…

Among the senior Taliban officials who appear to have made it into Pakistan are Obaidullah Akhund, the defense minister; Abdul Razaq, the interior minister; Akhter Mohammed Osmani, the military commander in Kandahar; Abdur Rahman Zahed, the deputy foreign minister; and Anwar Dangar, a top commander. Afghan intelligence officials said Razaq has been based in Chaman in southwest Pakistan, while Dangar has been in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, trying to bring together escaped commanders.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a lead story about the Bush Administration’s failure to convict Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Toronto-born jihadi captured as an illegal combatant in Afghanistan in July of 2002, after he had thrown a grenade which fatally wounded Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, a US medic.

Efforts to bring Mr. Khadr to trial via one of the Bush Administration’s controversial military tribunals has been dogged by litigation, and the prosecution has found it impossible to get intelligence agencies to open their secret files or to obtain testimony from the eyewitnesses, military personnel who are inaccessible because they’re serving during wartime at remote locations around the world.

The frustrated Army prosecutor Major Groharing nonetheless defended this preposterous and futile enterprize, arguing:

The difference between us and al Qaeda is that when we had him on the battlefield, we didn’t summarily execute him.

The Bush administration, and Major Groharing, are both crazy.

The attempt to deal, in peacetime and civilian fashion, via legal trials with attorneys, witnesses, and appeals to higher levels of the judiciary, is simply incompatible with the exigencies of war.

Mr. Khadr was an illegal combatant, bearing arms against the military forces of the United States. He violated the customs and usages of war by attacking a medic. He was never entitled to quarter. He should not have been made prisoner. He should not have received medical attention. He should merely have been summarily executed on the spot at the time.

Our cause being just, our conformity to the customs and usages of war, our not firing on medics are all quite sufficient to distinguish us from al Qaeda.”

The Daily Mail has the story of a 14-day defense in Afghanistan, against overwhelming enemy forces, by twelve British soldiers (including reservists and medics) leading a small force of Afghan soldiers and police.

Actually, the fight at Garmisir seems more impressive in a number of respects than Rorke’s Drift: 12 British soldiers at Garsimir versus 139 at Rorke’s Drift, 14 days of fighting versus 1 day, a better-armed enemy, and undoubtedly considerably more shots fired.

Helmand’s provincial governor, an Afghan trusted by the British, was warning that if Garmisir fell again he would have to resign.

On September 8 the town was overrun, presenting UK commanders with a crisis.

Garmisir must be saved, but there were no British troops available.

Instead, three officers were given 24 hours to scrape together what men and equipment they could, and ordered to lead around 200 Afghan National Army (ANA) and police on a desperate 100-mile dash across Taliban-held desert in open top Land Rovers and trucks, groaning with all the ammunition they could carry.

On the night of September 10 they paused outside Garmisir and at dawn – five years to the day after the Twin Towers fell – they advanced. Captain Doug Beattie of the Royal Irish Regiment was one of the three British officers, and recalls how things went disastrously wrong within minutes, when the ANA got lost and failed to secure a vital canal crossing…

Captain Paddy Williams, the Household Cavalry Regiment officer commanding the operation, realised decisive action was needed.

Nine British soldiers in two Land Rovers raced forward to storm the correct bridge, braving mortar fire, RPGs and heavy machine-gun fire from the Taliban.

The ANA soldiers quickly lost two soldiers killed and refused to go any further, leaving the tiny British force and the Afghan police to fight on.

For 12 hours on the first day the fighting raged, with continuous airstrikes by UK and American aircraft guided in by tactical air controller Corporal Sam New of the Household Cavalry Regiment, who was to play a crucial role in the battle.

By dusk, the British held the small town’s main street, with Doug Beattie and Sam New established on a low hill outside – sheltering in the remains of an ancient fort built by Alexander the Great’s armies…

The Taliban had other ideas, and the British were soon pinned down under withering fire from three sides, sheltering in mud huts while allied jets screamed overhead, dropping precision bombs as close as they dared to the UK ground call sign ‘Widow 77.’..

Wave after wave of Taliban attacks were broken up by airstrikes and machine gun fire, while the British officers led occasional fighting patrols forward, trying to stiffen the ANA soldiers’ wavering resolve…

Finally on the fourteenth day the exhausted British troops were relieved by a force of Royal Marines.

They had fired 50,000 rounds of 7.62mm machine gun ammunition, and thousands more from SA80 rifles. Some had even emptied their pistols – weapons of last resort – as they stormed buildings.

Miraculously, when the dust settled, there were no UK fatalities.

Dozens of Afghan soldiers and police were dead, along with an unknown but certainly large number of Taliban.

Unfortunately, the position was subsequently relinquished to the enemy.

Within days the Taliban attacked again in force and the hard-won, narrow buffer zone south of Garmisir was lost.

Today the frontline is back to where it was after day one of the battle, and Garmisir remains under siege.

Doug Beattie said: “It’s nobody’s fault. The Taliban were too strong, with endless supplies of men and ammunition coming in from Pakistan.”

General George Crook (1828-1890)

Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page sees a parallel to today’s battle between the American Army and barbarian Taliban tribesmen in the Afghan wilderness with the US Army’s 19th century struggle to subdue hostile Indians. The author suggests that today’s Army adopt the tactics and diplomacy of General George Crook.

Crook relied primarily on diplomacy, making a reputation among the Indians for honesty in negotiations, while his diplomacy was backed-up by overwhelming superiority of armed force. Crook brought the enemy to bay by a system of alliances with rival tribes, and by exploiting his greater capacities for movement and supply. US cavalry could move and strike hostile villages in winter time, when the loss of shelter and supplies would prove a devastating blow to the normally elusive enemy.

Read the whole thing.

Sky News:

British Paratroopers have filmed themselves fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and posted it on the internet.

The video – set to an Eminem track – features fierce firefights, a helicopter dropping supplies and a soldier firing a rocket launcher.

It starts with an expletive-filled warning to “Terry Taliban” which concludes with the lines, “So do one Terry, you’ve plenty to fear, we run this town, the Paras are here”.

The video, which has become a hit on YouTube, was made by members of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (Wikipedia), whose motto Utrinque Paratus means “Ready For Anything.” The troopers involved in the video returned home to Britain last month after a six month tour Afghanistan.

The rap song is Eminem‘s Lose Yourself.

3:34 min. video

It may seem a little strange that Yale 1970 classmate Garretson Beekman Trudeau, graduate of St. Paul’s (the alma mater of John Kerry) ’66, successful cartoonist, veteran only of the 1960’s Vietnam Peace Movement, and currently a vigorous opponent of the Bush Administration, has started his own milblog, open to postings from members of the armed forces currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But conspicuous public support of the troops is a consistent and studied policy on the part of the more sophisticated elements of the anti-war left. That particular maneuver allows them, when criticized for their antiwar activities, to say: “I’m patriotic. I’m not disloyal. I support our troops.” They’re only in favor of assuring the futility of all our troop’s efforts and sacrifices, the defeat of the United States, and the triumph of her adversaries.

The new military blog is part of Trudeau’s Slate site, which includes his well-known, currently humor-free and utterly tendentious leftwing cartoon, news, a debate forum, and a “Get Involved” bolshevik agitation site.

Despite its unwholesome associations, the new milblog has attracted some excellent contributions, and is definitely worth a read.

Reuters reports:

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

“The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It’s very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices … and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don’t dodge in and out of those marijuana forests,” he said in a speech in Ottawa.

“We tried burning them with white phosphorus — it didn’t work. We tried burning them with diesel — it didn’t work. The plants are so full of water right now … that we simply couldn’t burn them,” he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

“A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action,” Hillier said dryly.

One soldier told him later: “Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I’d say ‘That damn marijuana.'”

The Telegraph reports that a Muslim visitor has been invading wards containing British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan, threatening and haranguing injured men who are in no position to defend themselves.

A paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan was threatened by a Muslim visitor to the British hospital where he is recovering.

Seriously wounded soldiers have complained that they are worried about their safety after being left on wards that are open to the public at Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.

On one occasion a member of the Parachute Regiment, still dressed in his combat uniform after being evacuated from Afghanistan, was accosted by a Muslim over the British involvement in the country.

“You have been killing my Muslim brothers in Afghanistan,” the man said during a tirade.

Because the soldier was badly injured and could not defend himself, he was very worried for his safety, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

A relative of the Para said the man had twice walked on to the ward where two other soldiers and four civilians were being treated without once being challenged by staff.

“It’s not the best way to treat our returning men,” he said. “They are nervous that these guys might attack them and, despite being paratroopers, they cannot defend themselves because of their injuries.”