[NYTr] "miraculous timing" - Taliban Retreat as Gordon Brown Lands in Afgh

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Channel 4 News - Snowmail (UK) - Dec 10, 2007
http://www.channel4.com


The problem with the Taliban as the Brits have already discovered is
that they play dead.... They didn't even stay dead for five months, let
alone five years - how long with they play dead this time?"


Brown visit during Afghan offensive

With miraculous timing the Afghan town of Musa Qala falls just as Prime
Minister Gordon Brown lands in Helmand province. An operation that has
been ongoing since November comes to its critical climax as the rotor
blades' of the prime ministerial helicopter come to a halt in a British
airbase.

Some say there's a sense in which the Labour government fortunes have
been 'rescued' by the canoeist whose reappearance has so engaged the
country. Mr Brown's face today suggests that the retreat of the Taliban
wasn't doing him any harm either. The problem with the Taliban as the
Brits have already discovered is that they play dead for a far shorter
time than Mr Darwin did. They didn't even stay dead for five months,
let alone five years - how long with they play dead this time?

It's clearly been a very interesting military NATO operation with
considerable British and Afghanistan involvement too. But it's also
been the heavy boots of US special forces that cleared the way in the
first place.