TALIBAN SPANK THE CANADIANS

The Taliban assault on Sarposa prison included an exploding truck, a suicide bomber and a rocket barrage.

Hundreds of insurgents remain on the loose as Canadian troops help pick up the pieces after bold-as-brass jailbreak
June 15, 2008 Rosie DiMannoColumnist

Score one, a great big one, for the Taliban.

Increasingly sophisticated, they've proven they can fight a war of insurgency on many fronts, simultaneously.

Ambush, shoot-and-scoot, roadside detonations, suicide bombings, firefights – they're all in the playbook.

And today, there are hundreds more of them on the loose in the Kandahar City area.

Just what this southern capital, birthplace of the Taliban movement, needed – an almost miraculous resurrection from incarceration of jail-hardened foot soldiers, blasted free from Sarposa prison on Friday night in a cleverly co-ordinated break-out.

Actually, not so clever, merely brazen and emboldened and blow-out-the-doors spectacular.

They are not high-value detainees. Those Taliban "assets" are either in Afghanistan's main prison, the notorious Pol-e-Charkhi in Kabul, or under lock and key at the American-run detention facility in Bagram, north of the capital.

But Canada, along with other NATO allies, long ago made the decision – for reasons of pure optics – not to transfer any captured Taliban to U.S. authorities in Afghanistan.

That was a political call and it has now, again, cost dearly.

For the rest of the story click on the title at the top of this article

Hat Tip - as upon many occasions to Beowulf