Taliban Reshuffles Their Brass

February 14, 2006: There was a major Taliban command conference in Pakistan recently. Some regional, provincial, and district commanders inside Afghanistan were shuffled around, and a couple actually relieved. In addition, it was decided to initiate widespread use of suicide attacks. But commanders apparently were cautioned to avoid civilian casualties, and particularly to back-off from attacking what we might term "sensitive" targets, such as schools and teachers, mosques and clerics, due to bad PR. The Internet buzz among Islamic terrorists has become very concerned about why so many Iraqis and Afghans hate Islamic terrorists. The consensus seems to be that attacks on civilians has a lot to do with this bad image. .