Stardate 20011130.0556 (On Screen): Earlier reports that Kandahar had fallen may have been overly optimistic, but I think there's no question that the the Taliban's position there is continuing to grow more and more bleak. I'm not sure we'll see the kind of wholesale collapse which typified the captures of Mazar-e Sharif or Kabul, but the Taliban are doomed in the long run.
As this report indicates, the Taliban once again are facing the dilemma of facing an opponent with air supremacy: if you spread out your forces, then you don't have sufficient mass to stop a ground attack. But if you concentrate then your forces become a good target for air attack -- and you'll still lose on the ground, only with higher casualties. Is there a solution to this? Actually, there is: keep your forces concentrated but keep them in areas heavily packed with civilians, so that your principled opponent can't bomb them there. I sincerely hope that the Taliban don't do that, because it means that one way or another there will be a huge casualty toll both in combatants and in civilians. (House fighting is always very bad for the civilians in the area.) (discuss)
