Ashley Jackson

#AFGPanel Thanks! Locked down far away from all this and feeling woefully disconnected but caveats aside, here goes... The Taliban continues to expand/consolidate control in rural areas. Not breaking news, but the mechanics of Taliban strategy post-deal are worth exploring

#AFGPanel Even w/o announcing a "spring offensive,” Taliban attacks spiked. Particularly attacks on ANSF/checkpts/convoys/etc, in the North/NE/NW as well as South Yet they seem to be mostly refraining from real attempts to take key terrain/district centers

#AFGPanel (Side note: Yamgan in Badakshan is an exception, but (a) they held it roughly from 2015 til Sept-ish? ’19 so it's not new ground and (b) it’s fairly marginal geopolitically/militarily speaking. I digress…)

#AFGPanel IMHO: Taliban's exercising caution, testing what they can get away + the bounds of the deal's "strategic ambiguity." They won’t pursue military objectives at all costs (i.e. if they think they'll risk the deal...which depends on the TB reading US signals correctly )

#AFGPanel Here’s the thing: do the TB really need to "take" much territory militarily right now? If they can completely surround DAC so govt officials cannot leave, even to buy food? If they can plant white TB flags 20 feet from a police checkpoint and get away with it?

#AFGPanel And if the Taliban can move fairly freely in the district, without “taking” it? And set up fixed location sharia courts, open to all, on scheduled days of the week? And control land distribution? As @muzhary recently wrote about https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/economy-development-environment/one-land-two-rules-three-case-studies-on-taleban-sales-of-state-land/ …

#AFGPanel This is what they are doing: investing, consolidating, strengthening -- off the battlefield This creeping control strategy can't be captured in stats or color-coded maps. So it is hard to assess the full dimension of control Taliban have exercise (beyond the cities)

#AFGPanel A roughly accurate control might resemble Swiss cheese (roads/DACs surrounded, fuzzy contestation in scores of districts) w a few bastions of consolidated political order (Panshjir, Bamiyan) Yet it wouldnt capture how the Taliban mobilizes governance-as-a-tactic of war