TALIBAN'S NEW SURPISE ATTACK?

Taliban prisoner, Kandahar, Afghanistan, 2007. Photo by Sasha Uzunov.

TALIBAN'S NEW SURPISE ATTACK?

by Sasha Uzunov

Could the recent mass break out of Taliban inmates from Kandahar prison in southern Afghanistan using a tunnel be a sign of something more sinister

and deadly to come? That is surprise attacks on NATO bases, causing many casualties.

The Guardian newspaper, UK, revealed in a report by Jon Boone, 25 April

2011 that:

"Afghan and Nato forces have launched a huge operation to try to recapture 475 prisoners, nearly all of them Taliban insurgents, who staged an

extraordinary mass prison breakout using a tunnel.

" Officials said the inmates had escaped through the tunnel, dug from a

house to the wing of the prison where political prisoners are detained in

Kandahar.

"In an email, Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said the tunnel was

1,050ft (320 metres) long and had taken five months to construct,

"bypassing enemy check posts and Kandahar-Kabul main highway leading

directly to the political prison".

"He said just three insurgents inside the prison had known about the plot.

They helped ferry the prisoners out of the jail in an operation lasting four

and a half hours."

If the Taliban can come and go as they like in and out of jail, what is to stop them from having a suicide team tunneling into a NATO base and causing

carnage as well as political embarrassment to NATO?

Canadian military expert Scott Taylor makes the following point about the

Kandahar NATO airfield:

"If they can tunnel into the prison, they could tunnel under the airfield

security fences as well.....As you know, all 27,000 NATO troops inside the

wire carry a weapon, but NONE of them carry live ammunition (only the

perimeter guards are fully armed)....a single Taliban suicide squad could do a lot of damage if they tunneled in..."

(end)

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